In the anticipation that still many individuals do not possess the unique biometric ID, Aadhaar, or their details including the address or photograph may not be updated, now have asked all scheduled banks to offer Aadhaar enrollment as well as updation services.

As told to a leading business daily, CEO of UIDAI, Ajay Bhushan Pandey said ""In order to ensure people face no difficulty or running around to link their bank accounts with Aadhaar, we have amended existing regulations to make a provision that all scheduled banks will ..
have to offer Aadhaar enrolment facilities within the bank premises to their customers if they do not have Aadhaar. The customer need not go on a search for an Aadhaar enrolment centre".

The move has been effected after the Finance Ministry's notification that called for linking all bank accounts with Aadhaar from June 1, amending the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Customers who shall fail to link their bank accounts with aadhaar by December 31st may not be able to access their accounts as it may be rendered inoperative. The access would be reinstated only upon furnishing aadhaar. Also, in view of the increasing importance of the unique ID, recently the government made aadhaar mandatory for opening a new bank account.

To smoothen the process of linking bank accounts and aadhaar, while many banks are offering the facility online. Still in case your details in the aadhaar are old and do not match the details in the bank account, bank representatives can now update the fresh details in your unique Id upon furnishing the relevant documents.

So, the amended Aadhaar (Enrolment and Update) Regulations, 2016 now allows and engages all schedule banks as registrars of UIDAI who can enroll people for getting aadhaar. Until now, only public-run banks could act as UIDAI registrars and that too on the discretion of banks.

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