Is your PAN card active?

A recent report mentioned that over 11.44 lakh PAN cards have been deactivated over the time for multiple reasons. These may include reasons of multiple issuing of PAN card to the same person, or the ones issued to non-existing person. System of generating PAN cards might have become a bit robust over the time, but I guess, few years back, it wasn't. Just like in recent times, there have been stories about issuing Aadhar cards, where it could be issued to even monkeys or trees, probably issuing PAN card had no control.
But, seems things are a bit different now. Infact, every person who is involved in some kind of monetary transactions has to have a PAN Card. Even my 80 years old father has one, although, he himself spends only Rs.5 every day to buy flowers for Puja, from the stall close to our home. Now, that attempts are being taken to crosscheck the validity of these cards, every one need to be aware of the way to check, whether their card is still valid or the government has deactivated it. Ofcourse, there is higher probability of it being valid and active, but there is no harm in confirming it. And that too when it easy.
All we have to do is to visit this page of income tax department:
http://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/

Once on the page, your have to click on the option of "Know you PAN" .
A window will window asking for some of your details. I believe there is no harm in providing these informations here, on an official government website. In here, there is one query about status. This could be little confusing, as it tries to distinguish you as an individual or Hindu un-divided family, a trust, firm, company. But in general case, one should choose option "individual" to check your own personal PAN card status. You have to provide a mobile number. Once you enter these details, an OTP will be generated and sent to your mobile number. Enter this OTP and it will provide you with details of your PAN card as well as its present status.
The process is pretty simple. It just helps you to confirm details of PAN card, which has now become a core of all the monetary transactions.
A news appeared a couple of days back to inform people of this process, which I am pretty sure many of us must have missed. Even I checked it accidentally, a couple of days later. That's why this post.