Aadhar woes: Yet another bank opens account without consent

Following the report carried by MiD DAY about Aadhar details being used to open bank accounts of applicants without their consent lsquoYour Aadhar data is being misused by banksrsquo MiD DAY January 24 another applicant has come forward claiming that he has received a similar letter from a banku00a0 Surprisingly in this letter there is no mention of how the bank received the applicantrsquos personal details The letter requests the applicant to collect his cheque book and pass book from the branch Upset Amin Mukhi above received a letter from the Hill Road branch of Vijaya Bank confirming the opening of an account under his name Bandrabased businessman Amin Mukhi 43 received a letter addressed to him from the Hill Road branch of Vijaya Bank last week The letter dated December 28 2012 confirms the opening of an account under Mukhirsquos name and asks him to pick up the booklets from the branch It further states that he needs to carry only the letter sent by the branch while collecting them Mukhi said ldquoThough I received my Aadhar card six months ago I received this letter from the bank recently On visiting the bank I learnt that the bank had received my personal data from UIDAI and the account was opened on that basis They informed me that my account was inactive and could be activated on submission of a photocopy of the Aadhar card They said they had opened many other accounts like mine and would continue to keep them inactive till the Aadhar cardholder activates itrdquo Canrsquot be closed Mukhi claims that he never gave consent for his details to be shared with a bank for an account under his name He clearly remembers that there was no provision asking the applicant for permission to open a bank account The branch manager at the bank claimed that Mukhi could activate the account by producing any photoidentification When he asked if the account could be closed the manager said that was not possible Mukhi said ldquoWhen I asked the manager about the procedure for closing the account she said that the account is still inactive so I need not worry She claimed that though the account was open it was not operational When I stressed on wanting to close the account she claimed that it was not possiblerdquo Surprised by the response Mukhi wrote a letter to G Jagmohan Rao chief general managerin charge Dept of Banking Supervision Reserve Bank of India In the letter he mentioned the details and complained about what appeared to him the irresponsible action of an over enthusiastic marketing team at the bank Bank clarifies S Ram a senior official from Hill Road branch of Vijaya Bank said ldquoThese accounts are generated from our head office and sent to respective branches We have a predefined format of our promotional letter and we sent the same letter to the Aadhar applicants whose accounts have been opened at our branchrdquo Asked why there is no mention of UIDAI in the letter he added ldquoWe admit this mistake on our part in failing to mention where we got the details of the Aadhar applicant from in our letter The applicants need not activate the accounts and if they want to close the account I shall forward their request to my head officerdquo No scope for data leak UIDAI Sumnesh Joshi assistant director general UIDAI spoke to MiD DAY saying that he would send instructions to his staff to retrace the enrollment forms of the applicants who claim to have not given a consent for opening a bank account and yet have received a letter from a bank He claimed that there is no chance that the personal details of Aadhar applicants could be leaked or misused by a bank Joshi said ldquoThe details of applicants are maintained in a very secure manner and cannot be stolen or leaked We do not pass the database in a normal hard disk to banks by which the accounts have been generated It is only after obtaining the consent of the applicant that we share their details with the bankrdquo He added ldquoThe data is given in an encrypted form to the corporate offices of banks and they decrypt these data to generate bank accounts This data can be downloaded only by the bank using a private key and hence cannot be leaked from our databaserdquo Asked what action UIDAI has planned to address Mukhirsquos case Joshi said ldquoWe would forward the copy of the applicants who have not given consent to our head office in Delhi Our tech team would then trace their enrollment details to verify if consent was given In case of no consent from the applicant we would demand an explanation from the respective bank as to how they received the applicantrsquos detailsrdquou00a0u00a0