Editor,
Just a few days ago I sent my friend to the Bank of India located at Qualapatty,Shillong to open a savings bank account in my personal name. The concerned official of the bank apprised my said friend that two mandatory documents, Voter ID and three passport size photos are needed for opening a savings bank account; Aadhaar and Pan Card may not be included for submission to the bank.
However, having known that the Bank of Baroda being the second largest public sector bank in India after State Bank of India, and as the former being just a stone’s throw away from that Bank of India, l have, therefore, preferred the Bank of Baroda to open my personal savings account. But, amazingly, I have been made to understand that submission of Aadhaar testimonials is compulsive in the Bank of Baroda, else nothing is being done!
A common man like me is literally and figuratively thrown into a vortex of confusion if one public sector bank is stating that Aadhaar linking is not mandatory whilst its counterpart has decidedly maintained that Aadhaar is sine qua non/non-negotiable for opening a banking account! Metaphorically, these public sector banks are speaking in different languages. And it couldn’t have come at the worst of times when lately the Election Commission of India (ECI) has asserted that Aadhaar is not proof of one’s citizenship! It, therefore unequivocally denotes that Aadhaar has become a redundant document for ECI. And as if that wasn’t enough, even the Hon’ble Supreme Court has ruled in its 2018 Puttaswamy judgment that Aadhaar is not mandatory for opening a bank account. If that being the case, why can’t Bank of Baroda be subject to contempt of Court? This festering issue of Aadhaar has virtually thrown us into the Kafkaesque world of surrealism! Just as what a great Victorian poet, Matthew Arnold has written in his well-known poem, Dover Beach, we have become the “ignorant armies clash by night”
JK Diengdoh,
Via e-mail
