KOCHI: Kerala, which has 100 per cent Aadhaar enrolment, and is perhaps far ahead of other states in its seeding and bank account authentication, may not see its people delinking the biometric card from their accounts.“At the end of the day, if you need benefits such as LPG subsidy, you’ve to link your bank accounts with Aadhaar,” said a senior SBI officer. “No one is going to risk losing the benefits.”Federal Bank executive vice-president Jose K Mathew said: “We don’t think de-linking is possible.”
Asked whether account holders would turn up asking to delink their accounts from Aadhaar, the SBI officer said some may do, just to create mischief at the branches.“We can delink accounts in 5-10 minutes,” he said, adding “the account holder just needs to give an application on a white paper.”
He, however, added Aadhaar was very important to avail various services and it would go a long way in making the bank accounts safe.
Mathew said it was up to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to decide whether to make Aadhaar an option for know your customer (KYC) norms while opening new accounts.
A banker said: “The Supreme Court has said Aadhaar is not compulsory. If UIDAI allows the banks access to its data, and RBI continues to give Aadhaar an option for KYC, then the current system will continue.”
Kerala is the first state in the country where every household has access to at least one bank account and has banking facility in all grama panchayats.
The state also has opened Financial Literacy centres in all the blocks and remains a leader in financial inclusion in India, as per the minutes of the State-Level Bankers Committee.