(This story originally appeared in on Sep 12, 2017)

NEW DELHI: A day after TOI reported that several Aadhaar enrolment centres were fleecing applicants, the Unique Identification Authority of India said that since its inception, it had learnt of such contraventions and blacklisted over 49,000 operators.Sources in UIDAI said that the company had independently received several complaints of people being overcharged for Aadhaar services and had taken action against such violators."If any operators or supervisors are found involved in corrupt practices, they are blacklisted from the system for five years," UIDAI said. "Additionally , the enrolment agency is also penalised with a fine of Rs 50,000 in addition to other legal steps. Since December 2016, over 6,100 overcharging incidents have been fined Rs 10,000 each for the incident and from July 2017, 466 such incidents have drawn penalties of Rs 50,000 for each incident."UIDAI said that it would welcome people stepping forward with specific complaints and assured that it would initiate action against those violating the norms.The sources added that directions had also been given in June for all enrolment centres to be shifted to government-owned premises."Time had initially been given till the end of August to effect this shift, but it has now been extended to September 30," said one of the sources. "This is being done to ensure that there is proper supervision of these centres and immediate attention can be drawn to reports of misconduct." Apparently , there is no scope for non-compliance and those who have not moved will face penalties.Meanwhile, TOI received several more complaints from readers who said that they had been charged more than the mandated fees for Aadhaar services. Sarthak Kalucha, a reader, reported that he went to an Aadhaar centre in Kalkaji's Krishna Market on August 25 and was asked for Rs 200 as enrolment fee."I was shocked because as far as I knew, there are no charges payable on a new Aadhaar enrolment," narrated Kalucha. "I asked the service centre owner since when he had been charging the fee and he replied that he had been accepting the payment since July 18. Because I was getting late for work and had spent an hour in the queue, I simply paid and left."Another reader, Abhinav Bhasin, who was applying for an Aadhaar card for his daughter, said he was told that while the card was free, he would have to pay Rs 200 for getting a token immediately. "I paid the amount but also had to sign a declaration that I got the Aadhaar card for free," he alleged.