Department of Telecom directs tele companies to stop Aadhaar based e-KYC after Supreme Court's verdict

The Department of Telecom has barred tele companies like Airtel, Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Idea to register new customers via Aadhaar based digital authentication in line with the Supreme Court order.

The decision will now lead the companies to register the details of the customers through a physically verifying way, which can be costly and time-taking until a new method is implemented.

 “....all licensees are to discontinue the use of Aadhaar eKYC (electronic know your customer) service of Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) both for verification as well as for issuing new mobile connections,” said a statement by the DoT.

The DoT in its order has asked the companies to adopt an alternate digital measure which includes and envisages a customer acquisition form that can be embedded with live pictures of the customers and images which are scanned as a proof of address and identity, which will eventually make the process a paperless work.

“Meanwhile this (alternate digital) process can be implemented provisionally by all TSPs (telecom service providers). Any modification which may be required in this process by the government shall be carried out within a period of 30 days,” the DoT has said.

A senior DoT official, as reported by The Economic Times, said, ““Operators will be unhappy, but we are left with no choice. Customers will now have to submit their documents, which will be digitally scanned and submitted to the telcos’ database. It will be back to the earlier days.”

Reliance Jio will be highly affected amongst the other companies, as the entire process of adding subscribers in Jio is based on Aadhaar and not it’ll be a slow process.

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