'Seed Aadhaar numbers of MNREGA card holders to bank accounts'

Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officer M R Ravi urged bankers to seed Aadhaar card numbers of job card holders under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme to their bank accounts at the earliest.

Speaking at a district-level review committee meeting for banking development and district credit plan for 2017-18 here on Tuesday, he said 11,049 bank accounts of job card holders are yet to be linked with Aadhaar card numbers, even after submitting consent forms.

Failure to link Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts will deny the job card holders with their wages from April 1, he said. Undue delay in discharging the duties amounts to corruption. The bankers should be friendly towards their customers, he suggested.

Citing an example of how a sex worker, who had applied for a loan under a government-sponsored programme to lead a dignified life, was made to run from pillar to post by a public sector bank in Mangaluru, Ravi said when the government announces a scheme for vulnerable sections of the society, it is announced with a social commitment for the welfare of the community.

He called upon the bankers to sensitise their staff and not to pass arrogant comments on the background of the applicant. The bankers should also work on declaring 81 villages in Dakshina Kannada as cashless villages.

RBI assistant general manager B N Gopinath called upon the bankers to push for digital payment and reduce the cash handling. The financial literacy centres should create awareness on digital mode of payment among the villagers. The rural banks in the district should organise at least one camp on digital payment in a month, he said. All the villages that have more than 5,000 population should have a bank branch as per the guidelines of the RBI, he added.

Scrapped notes
Gopinath said the scrapped currencies received by the banks from customers should be kept in the currency chest of the banks till further directions from the RBI. To a query on NRIs possessing demonetised currencies, he said the NRIs should show the junked notes to customs officials at the airport and get declaration form stamped. The declaration will have to be submitted at RBI, Chennai, while depositing the junked currency, he added.

‘Increase CD ratio’
Banks in Dakshina Kannada district have been asked to improve their credit-deposit (CD) ratio. Syndicate Bank DGM N S Somayaji said that CD ratio as on December 31 was 53.87% showing a decrease of 5.39% to corresponding CD ratio of 59.26% as on December 31, 2015. He called upon the banks to adopt strategies to improve the CD ratio during the ensuing quarters.