Lost, Damaged or Wrong PAN Card? Reprint and Correction From the UK (2026)

You went to open an NRO account, file a return, or sell that flat in Pune, and the bank asked for your PAN card. You opened the drawer and found nothing, or a cracked card, or worse, a card that spells your name "Sandeep" when your passport says "Sandip". From a flat in Hounslow or Leicester, that small rectangle of laminated card suddenly becomes the thing standing between you and your own money in India.

Here is the reassuring part, and the part most people get wrong. You almost never need a new PAN. The Permanent Account Number is exactly that, permanent. It is yours for life and never changes, no matter how many times the physical card is lost, damaged, or printed with a typo. What you need is either a reprint of the existing card or a correction of the data sitting against your existing number. The single most expensive mistake an NRI can make here is to assume the old card is gone and simply apply for a brand new PAN. That is not a fresh start. It is a penalty.

This guide walks through the difference between a reprint and a correction, why a second PAN is actively punished under Indian law, and the very real friction of getting either done from 5,000 miles away.

First, understand: the number never dies#

Your PAN is issued once and stays with you for the rest of your life. A change of address, a change of surname after marriage, British citizenship, a new passport, none of it touches the ten-character number itself. The card is just a printout of data the Income Tax Department already holds.

That single fact decides which of two very different jobs you actually need:

• A reprint when the number and all the printed details are correct, but the physical card is lost, stolen, damaged, faded, or simply never reached you. The database is right; you just need a fresh card (or the digital e-PAN).
• A correction when something printed on the card is wrong, your name, father's name, date of birth, photo, or signature, or has legitimately changed (a married name, for instance). Here you are editing the record itself, then a new card is issued reflecting the corrected data.

The one thing you must never do: apply for a second PAN#

This is the heart of the matter, and the reason this article exists. Indian law permits exactly one PAN per person, for life. Section 139A of the Income Tax Act is unambiguous: no individual may hold, obtain, or use more than one Permanent Account Number.

Hold a second one, even by innocent mistake, and you are exposed to a penalty of ₹10,000 under Section 272B. It does not matter whether you applied for the duplicate deliberately or simply forgot you already had a PAN from a job in India fifteen years ago. The Assessing Officer has the discretion to levy the fine either way, and a duplicate PAN can also freeze bank accounts and tangle your tax filings while it gets unwound.

This is precisely the trap that catches NRIs. You moved to the UK in your twenties, half-remember being issued a PAN for a first job, can't find the card, and the simplest-looking option online is "Apply for new PAN". Resist it. If a PAN was ever issued to you, the correct route is to retrieve the number and reprint or correct it, not to spawn a second one and then spend months surrendering it.

If you genuinely cannot remember whether you ever held a PAN, that uncertainty needs resolving before you submit anything, not after. The income tax e-filing portal has a "Know Your PAN" lookup using name and date of birth, but matching against the database from abroad, where your old details may not align with your current passport, is exactly where things stall.

Reprint vs correction: what actually differs#

The two requests look similar on the portals but behave very differently in fees, documents, and what comes out the other end.

A few things worth underlining from that table. A reprint needs no documents at all, because nothing is changing, it simply re-issues the card from data already held, reusing your existing photo and signature. A correction does need proof, and from April 2026 the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) replaced the old change form with the new Form PAN CR-01 for individuals (PAN CR-02 for entities), submitted through Protean (formerly NSDL) or UTIITSL. For a name change after marriage you'll typically need a marriage certificate; for a date-of-birth fix, a passport or birth certificate.

And the digital card matters here. Whether you reprint or correct, you can download the e-PAN, a PDF carrying a QR code that banks and the tax portal accept, free of charge from the Protean or UTIITSL site within 30 days of issuance. After that window a token fee of around ₹8 applies. For many NRIs the e-PAN, arriving by email within roughly 24 hours of processing, is the part they actually need urgently, while the physical card follows by post.

The UK-from-abroad reality#

On paper this is a fully online, paperless process. In practice, doing it from the UK is where the fiddly bits multiply, and where a small slip costs you weeks rather than minutes.

The address and dispatch problem. A physical card sent to a foreign address attracts the higher fee, around ₹959 for a reprint and roughly ₹1,011 for a corrected physical card, and then it travels by international post. Domestic reprints reach an Indian address in about 15 to 20 working days; to the UK, you are realistically waiting several weeks longer, with the usual risk of a card that simply never arrives at a UK flat with an unfamiliar address format. NRIs must also have an address that the portal will accept; if you have no Indian address, a foreign address can be used, but it has to be entered in the precise format the system expects.

The matching problem. This is the silent killer of NRI PAN requests. The portal authenticates you against the data on file. If the name, date of birth, or father's name you enter does not match the record exactly, the request fails, often with an error message that explains nothing. The very people most likely to face this are the ones whose details have drifted: a new British passport, an anglicised spelling, a married surname, a date of birth that a clerk transposed years ago.

The Aadhaar problem. The smooth, instant routes, free e-PAN, Aadhaar e-KYC authentication, generally lean on an Aadhaar number linked to an Indian mobile that can receive the OTP. Plenty of NRIs have no Aadhaar, or one tied to an Indian SIM long since cancelled. Lose that shortcut and you fall back to the document-and-verification route, which is slower and far less forgiving of formatting errors.

The payment and form problem. Foreign-card payment gateways on Indian government portals are notoriously temperamental, declining UK cards without explanation. And the new PAN CR-01 correction form expects supporting documents to be self-attested and presented in a specific way; get the attestation or the document type wrong and the application is returned, restarting the clock.

None of this is impossible. It is, however, exactly the kind of low-stakes-looking task that quietly eats an evening, then a weekend, then a month of chasing an undelivered card and a failed payment, all while your bank is asking for the PAN you can't produce.

Where this leaves you#

The decision tree is genuinely simple. Card lost or damaged but details correct, reprint. Details wrong or changed, correct the existing PAN with Form PAN CR-01. Never, under any circumstances, apply for a second PAN to "replace" one you've lost. The number you were issued is yours for life; the job is only ever to get a clean card or a clean record against it.

What is not simple is executing that flawlessly from the UK, getting the data to match, the documents attested correctly, the foreign address accepted, the payment to clear, and the card to actually arrive. That is the part worth handing over. Letting a specialist confirm whether you already hold a PAN, file the right request the first time, and chase the dispatch means the difference between a corrected card in a few weeks and a duplicate-PAN headache that follows you into your next tax return.

Other

Apply NRI PAN Card in UK

Apply NRI PAN Card in UK

Apply for or update your PAN card as an NRI. Essential for property, tax, and banking in India. No VFS visit needed.

Turnaround: ePAN 7-12 days, physical card 20-25 days

From£100.00

View service

If your wider reason for needing the PAN is a property sale, an NRO account, or moving funds home, it's worth getting the PAN itself bulletproof first, because everything downstream depends on it matching your other Indian records exactly.

Frequently asked questions#

Can I just apply for a new PAN if I've lost the old one from the UK?#

No. Holding more than one PAN is illegal under Section 139A and carries a ₹10,000 penalty under Section 272B. If you ever held a PAN, you must reprint or correct that existing number, not apply afresh. If you're unsure whether you ever had one, that needs checking before you submit anything.

What's the difference between a PAN reprint and a correction?#

A reprint re-issues the physical card when the printed details are all correct but the card is lost, damaged or never arrived; it needs no documents. A correction edits the underlying record, name, date of birth, photo and so on, and requires supporting proof on the new Form PAN CR-01 introduced in April 2026.

How much does it cost to reprint or correct a PAN to a UK address?#

Roughly ₹959 for a reprint dispatched to a foreign address, and around ₹1,011 to ₹1,017 for a corrected physical card abroad. The digital e-PAN PDF can be downloaded free within 30 days of issuance, which is often the version you need most urgently.

How long does it take to receive the card in the UK?#

A physical card reaches an Indian address in about 15 to 20 working days; to the UK, expect several weeks longer because of international post, with a real risk of non-delivery. The e-PAN typically arrives by email within around 24 hours of the request being processed.

My name on the PAN doesn't match my British passport. Is that a problem?#

Yes, and it's a common one. A mismatch can cause the request to fail, and it can clash with your bank KYC. The fix is a correction to align the PAN with your current documents, but the application must match the data on file precisely to authenticate, which is exactly where NRI requests stall.