The Income Tax department, short of annulling the recently introduced mandatory Aadhaar-PAN linkage, has climbed down its high horse so much so that one wonders whether the linkage was worth it at all in the first place. The government ought to have addressed the problem of fictitious returns to split the income among numerous persons to get away with lower taxes in a different manner than seeding PAN with Aadhaar -- dispensing with PAN and relying just on Aadhaar. Statistics support the need for this course of action. Aadhaar has been issued to 111 crore people but PAN only to 25 crore people out of whom there are just six crore taxpaying persons. Around 1.08 crore persons have successfully linked their PAN with Aadhaar. This points to the scale of the problem as well as the course of action to be taken. Gun after tax evaders on the basis of their Aadhaar identity. Jaitley has already said soon Aadhaar would be only identity document and PAN would be rendered redundant.