After the recent PNB scam fall out, industry body Assocham on Sunday made the call to relax linking of Aadhaar with bank account particularly those with the PSBs. The industry body cites that the banking concern is struggling to protect their core business and amid all such issues bank account becoming inoperative after the current deadline of March 31, 2018 for bank account and aadhaar will only add to the woes of the economy which is slowly retreating from the disruptions of demonetisation and then GST.

At present the last date to link aadhaar with various social benefit schemes, financial accounts as well as bank accounts stands as March 31, 2018.

In a statement, the industry body said, "Notwithstanding judicial scrutiny and government's well-intentioned moves, the banks, particularly those in the PSUs, may find it hard and challenging to complete the task of linking Aadhaar with the accounts of all the customers by March 31, 2018 thus necessitating relaxation of the deadline".

"There is a lot of confusion which may lead to further problems as we approach the deadline ...It is best advised that the banks be allowed to come out of the crisis like situation before they are given the additional task of Aadhaar seeding to customer accounts," it added further.

With Inputs From PTI