Instances of persons having more than one Director Identification Number (DIN) have reportedly come to the notice of the Government during the last three years and the current year.

 It has come to the notice that 333, 48, 53 and 35 persons have been allotted multiple Director Identification Number (DIN) during the financial years 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15 respectively. Action has been initiated against these 469 persons. In 456 cases, show cause notices have been issued while 13 complaints have been filed in the Court.

In order to reduce the instances of multiple allotment of DINs, PAN has been made mandatory in DIN application. The application is accepted only when the information with regard to name, father’s name and date of birth is validated against the PAN data maintained by Income Tax department. In addition, de-duplication within the MCA21 database is also carried out. Since 2013, 1361 DINs have been cancelled.

This was stated by Shri Arun Jaitley, Minister of Corporate Affairs in written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.

DIN duplication prompts mandatory PAN validation and MCA21 de-duplication to prevent multiple director identifiers. Multiple allotments of Director Identification Numbers prompted investigations, issuance of show cause notices and some court complaints, and cancellations of DINs since 2013. To prevent recurrence, PAN validation is now mandatory in DIN applications, with acceptance conditioned on matching name, father's name and date of birth against PAN records, together with de-duplication within the MCA21 database.