Submitting your return is only step one. Until you e-verify it, the Income Tax Department treats your return as never filed — no processing, no refund, and the late-filing clock keeps running as if you had done nothing at all.
You have 30 days from the date of submission to complete verification. This is the single most common reason a return that felt finished in July produces a nasty surprise in September. The 30-day limit replaced the older 120-day window from 1 August 2022, so any guide still telling you that you have four months is out of date.
The fastest method is Aadhaar OTP and it takes under a minute. Everything else below exists for the cases where that does not work.
Method 1: Aadhaar OTP
This is the default choice and the one to try first. It requires only that your mobile number is registered with Aadhaar and that your PAN and Aadhaar are linked.
On the income tax portal go to e-File, then Income Tax Returns, then e-Verify Return. Choose the option to verify using an OTP sent to the mobile number registered with Aadhaar, tick the consent box, and generate the OTP. Enter the six-digit code within its validity period and the return is verified immediately.
If the OTP never arrives, the usual causes are a mobile number that was registered with Aadhaar years ago and since changed, or a PAN and Aadhaar that are not actually linked. Both need fixing at source — no amount of retrying will help. Move to another method if you need to verify today.
Method 2: Net banking
This works even when your Aadhaar mobile number is out of date, which makes it the most reliable fallback.
Select the net banking option on the e-Verify screen, choose your bank, and you are handed off to your bank's login page. After logging in, look for the income tax e-filing link inside your bank's portal — banks place it in different menus, commonly under a tax or services section. Clicking it returns you to the income tax portal already authenticated, where you select the return and verify it.
Most major banks support this, though the exact menu path differs and banks occasionally move it during redesigns. If you cannot find the link, your bank's own help pages are more current than any third-party guide, including this one.
Method 3: EVC through a pre-validated bank account
An Electronic Verification Code is a ten-digit code generated against a bank account you have already pre-validated on the portal.
The pre-validation itself is worth doing regardless of how you verify, because your refund cannot be credited to an account that has not been pre-validated. Go to your profile on the portal, open the bank account section, add your account with the correct IFSC, and let the portal validate it against your PAN. Validation usually completes within a day.
Once validated and EVC-enabled, you can generate an EVC on demand and use it to verify the return. The name on the bank account must match your PAN records — a mismatch is the most frequent reason pre-validation fails.
Method 4: EVC through a demat account
Mechanically identical to the bank account route, but using a demat account pre-validated with NSDL or CDSL. Useful if your bank is not EVC-enabled but your broker account is. The same name-matching requirement applies.
Method 5: Bank ATM
A handful of banks let you generate an EVC at their ATM. You insert your card, choose the option to generate an EVC for income tax filing, and receive the code by SMS. It is a genuine fallback when you have no working internet banking and no Aadhaar OTP, though the list of participating banks is short and worth confirming with your own bank first.
Method 6: Digital Signature Certificate
A DSC is mandatory for certain taxpayers, principally companies and those whose accounts require audit. For an ordinary salaried filer it is unnecessary and involves buying a certificate, so ignore it unless your case specifically requires it.
The offline route: sending ITR-V
If every electronic method fails, you can print the ITR-V acknowledgement, sign it in blue ink, and post it by ordinary or speed post to the Centralised Processing Centre in Bengaluru. Courier is not accepted.
This still has to reach CPC within the same 30-day window, and you carry the risk of postal delay, so treat it as a genuine last resort. The electronic methods verify instantly; the postal route can take weeks and leaves you without confirmation in the meantime.
What happens if you miss the 30 days
Your return is treated as not filed. That is the whole consequence, and it cascades: no processing, no refund, and if the original deadline has passed, you are now looking at a belated return with the late fee and interest that come with it. Our guide to the penalty for filing ITR after 31 July sets out what that costs.
There is a remedy. You can file a condonation of delay request on the portal, explaining why verification was late. The department can accept it, in which case your original filing date is restored. It is a discretionary relief, not an entitlement, so it is worth writing a specific and honest reason rather than a generic one.
The far better plan is not to need it. Verify on the same day you file — not tomorrow, not at the weekend. The whole process takes a minute when it works, and the failure modes above all take days to fix.
After verification
Once verified, your return goes to CPC for processing. You will eventually receive an intimation under Section 143(1) confirming the department's computation against yours, and if a refund is due it is credited to your pre-validated bank account.
While you wait, it is worth checking that the rest of your return holds together. If you are unsure you used the right form, our guide on which ITR form to file explains the choice, and if you want to sanity-check the tax figure itself, run your numbers through our income tax calculator and compare it with what the portal computed.
This article is general educational information, not personalised tax advice. Portal navigation, bank menus and the list of participating institutions change from time to time, so confirm the current process on incometax.gov.in before you rely on any step described here.