Bhubaneswar: With the Centre hell-bent on linking Aadhaar with bank accounts and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) washing off its hands saying it’s a government decision, bank staff are expecting a heavy rush at counters in the coming days.
Financial experts claim that the move will increase the workload of bank employees and put them at risk. “The banking employees who are doing the Aadhaar linking process have to ensure that it is a genuine identity card. Therefore, the employee who verified the Aadhaar would face issues if it was found fake in future. Subsequently, this decision will increase the workload of employees and the banks would have to assign more employees for this process. So, the other transactions in the banking sector would also get affected in the coming days,” said Jagadish Jena, president, All Orissa Bank Employees Association.
In fact, some bank employees also pointed out some technical difficulties in the linking process. “The linking often faced technical issues for those who have many accounts. This means you may be able to link your Aadhaar at Bank A, but you may not be able to do it at Bank B since you have an already linked Aadhaar bank account,” PK Tripathy, secretary, All Orissa Bank Employees Federation, said.
But, the top officials of Electronics and Information Technology (E&IT) handling the Aadhaar-related issues in Orissa are unaware of this. “It may be a minor technical issue and we are unaware. However, these kinds of issues have to be addressed by the Centre,” said a top official of E&IT requesting anonymity.
With many banks, especially in rural areas, lacking proper infrastructure and internet connectivity, the whole verification process of the unique identification card would take time in many banks. “The high speed internet connection is not available in all banks, especially at those in rural areas. So, the slow connectivity would make verification and linking more time consuming and the banking operations in rural sector would get badly affected,” said JB Mohapatra, convenor, United Banking Employees Federation.
Although the Centre is trying to bring more people under the banking purview for subsidies, experts claim that this linking move may encourage people to depend on illegal private financing firms.
“We are requesting the customer for more and more documents and details. Earlier, we requested for PAN card and now we are requesting for Aadhaar. So the people would find opening a bank account more difficult and time consuming process. This would encourage the rural population to depend on illegal money lenders and private players who may not have credible track record. This apart, the linking of Aadhaar would make the customer details accessible to multiple agencies. So, the trust of the customer in banks would get compromised,” added Jena.
Meanwhile, Indian Constitution experts said the Central government through this move is going against the Aadhaar Act 2016 which clearly mentions that the Aadhaar enrolment as voluntary.
“Since we have no data protection, it is unfair to make Aadhaar linking mandatory. So, the government has to take necessary measures to ensure that the citizen’s privacy is not getting compromised through the linking process. The accessibility of a customer’s banking details to a third party will eventually affect the credibility of our banking sector too” said SN Misra, eminent constitutional expert and economist.
Jose K Joseph, OP