Aadhaar tangle: Niti Aayog to hold meeting on resolving KYC issue

New Delhi: Niti Aayog will meet all the stakeholders in the digital payments industry in resolving the customer authentication issue after the Supreme Court verdict restricted the use of Aadhaar details for KYC.

"I will have a round table with the stakeholders," said Ratan Watal, Member Secretary – PMEAC and Principal Advisor, Niti Aayog, on the sidelines of a digital payments programme. "There are some issues which have come up from the industry, we will sit down and see what the issues are and find out how to move forward. The industry is saying that it may hamper the digital payments system." 

Ficci and the Niti Aayog Monday jointly organised a workshop on the 'Online Digital Payments Programme' aimed at capacity building and imparting training to the officials working in this area.

In its ruling on September 26, the Supreme Court had declared the Aadhaar scheme as constitutionally valid but struck down some of its provisions including its linking with bank accounts, mobile phones and school admissions.

Apart from school admissions, the SC said Aadhaar was not necessary for the examinations conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Examination, National Eligibility-cum- Entrance Test for medical entrance and the University Grants Commission.

However, it remains mandatory for filing of IT returns and allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN).

Speaking at the worksop, Watal said there is a need to work further with the payments systems and focus on training officials in areas such as banking and financial institutions.

He said a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by the Niti Aayog, Department of Telecommunications and United Nations' specialised unit -- International Telecommunication Union (ITU) -- a few months ago.

"ITU has done a lot of work in this field in the emerging economies on digital payments. With their help we prepared a three module programme aimed at how to improve digital payment space in India," he said.

He also said that the Niti Aayog had requested ITU to help India in the digital payment space as well as capacity building.

"If they have some programmes or training on AI or blockchain we can use that. At this stage, it is just an idea, so let's see how to go about with this," Watal said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)