Banks have been harassing their customers in the name of seeding of Aadhaar with customer’s bank accounts. Some banks even tried to impose a restriction on deposit and withdrawal of cash unless Aadhaar is seeded with bank account. However, vigilant citizens foiled all these attempts of banks and Indian government so far.

Now government and banks have once again started harassing the bank customers. As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directions, Aadhaar is absolutely optional for banking purposes, including direct bank transfer (DBT).

Even a Constitution Bench of Supreme Court has made Aadhaar optional (pdf) till the matter is decided by it finally. The constitutionality of Aadhaar and Aadhaar Act, 2016 has already been challenged before the Supreme Court.

In fact, Indian must block their biometric and deseed Aadhaar from all services and purposes as soon as possible. But both biometric blocking and Aadhaar deseeding must be done together for stronger protection.

If you have already seeded your Aadhaar with a bank account, ask your bank to deseed it. No bank can refuse to deseed your Aadhaar form the bank account if you have complied with other KYC requirements. Such KYC requirements can be complied with by giving other government approved documents like PAN, driving license, passport, etc.

Aadhaar is not needed for:

(1) Opening of a bank account or continuing the same in an uninterrupted manner,

(2) Uninterrupted cash deposits and withdraws, subject to citing of PAN in some cases,

(3) Opting for Internet banking, digital payments, etc without Aadhaar clubbing,

(4) For money laundering issues that Indian government and its authorities are required to manage,

(5) For checking terrorism funding or any other illegal activity involving money of a person, etc.

The list is just illustrative and many more cases would be covered by this list in future.

So Aadhaar is optional for all purposes, including for banking related issues. If any bank or other institution asks for Aadhaar, simply refuse the same citing interim order of the Constitution Bench.