New Delhi: The government is expected to bring in biometric PAN cards shortly to tackle the problem of increasing misuse of Permanent Account Number (PAN) cards.

Finance Minister, P Chidambaram said in Lok Sabha that a combined Working Group in the Finance Ministry has given its statement after getting technical and commercial propositions from top biometric solution providers.

“The report is at present under consideration,” Mr. Chidambaram stated.

He also clued-up the House that the amount of persons suspected to have duplicate PANs is likely to be 13,10,127 all through the country.

The substantiation exercise as of August 10, 2007 has been finished regarding 11,43,919 persons of which 10,18421 PAN cards have been found to be duplicate and have been deactivated.

Mr. Chidambaram said biometric solutions were being considered so nobody could get a duplicate card and no non-existent entity could get it.