After the Supreme Court’s Judgment on Aadhaar, UIDAI had instructed Mobile Operators in India to submit their Aadhaar Exit Plan. And on this note Mobile Operators like Vodafone, Jio and Airtel has submitted their Aadhaar Exit Plan on discontinuing Aadhaar based authentication to UIDAI.
All these above three telecoms has also raised issue, saying this unexpected change in KYC will need more investments which will further burden the financially stretched operators. However they are also working with the telecom department for alternative KYC verification methods.
Mobile Operators has also stated in the letter that they will comply with the Supreme Court’s verdict which was issued last month, but all the investments which they made in e-KYC will wasted if Aadhaar-based eKYC authentication is thoroughly discarded.
Mobiles Operators has also informed UIDAI that they had made tremendous investments in setting up the infrastructure for e-KYC, additionally the operators have invested in biometric devices and human resource. So it would be massive waste for telecom companies.
Operators has also mentioned in the letter that Aadhaar based eKYC verification was instantaneous process and was working very effectively in rural. But now after this new update, mobile operators will have to work with telecom department that is DOT in bringing alternative KYC process which will take more time as they will have to re-train their manpower and educate consumers with this new process.
Other mobile operators has asked for more time for submission of their Aadhaar eKYC exit plan, as they are waiting for direction from DoT for alternative KYC verification process.
Just a few days ago, the Apex Advisory Council for Telecom in India (ACT) had approached Department of Telecommunications with the alternative forms of verification process. So the telecom operators are busy responding to the biometric authority’s letter which was sent few days ago after the Supreme Court Judgment came out stating Private Companies are barred from using Aadhaar based eKYC to validate identity of their customers.
The biometric regulatory has also instructed the operators to accept all forms of requests to delink Aadhaar from mobile numbers and to carry out fresh KYC as per DoT’s directive within 6 months from the date of customers Aadhaar delinking requests, so to avoid de-activation of the mobile number.
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