Unlike the previous years, you may not get the income tax refund credited in your bank account, unless the account is pre-validated. For this, your bank account must be linked with your PAN and the name in the bank account must match with the name given in the PAN Card.
Earlier, mentioning of bank account numbers in the Income Tax Return (ITR) Form and selecting the default account was sufficient to receive the amount of income tax refund in the default bank account.

But it may not be sufficient now to just mention your bank account numbers in the ITR Form to get the income tax refund credited in the default bank account.
“No, pre-validation is required. If the account is not pre-validated, refunds are not credited,” said CA Karan Batra, Founder and CEO of CharteredClub.com.