Aadhaar made mandatory for post office deposits, PPF, KVP; last date December 31

After bank deposits, mobile and various welfare schemes, the 12-digit Aadhaar has been made mandatory for all post office deposits, PPF, the National Savings Certificate scheme and Kisan Vikas Patra. The recent move by the government is in continuation with its push for Aadhaar.The deadline to provide the 12-digit unique identification number Aadhaar is December 31, 2017.  Announcement regarding Aadhaar quoting was made by Ministry of Finance in four separate Gazette notifications. "Provided that where Aadhaar number has not been assigned, the depositor shall submit proof of application of enrolment for Aadhaar," the notification dated September 29 said.

Existing depositors who have not provided Aadhaar number at the time of application for such deposit "shall submit his Aadhaar number to the post office savings bank or deposit office concerned, on or before December 31, 2017," it added.

The government is consistently being pushing for Aadhaar and has made it mandatory for bank deposits, obtaining mobile phone and several government schemes. In fact, it extended the deadline for obtaining Aadhaar for availing government schemes and subsidies from September 30 to December 31.

"As a result of the review of welfare schemes covered and to provide the benefits of such schemes to all eligible beneficiaries of the scheme, it has been decided to further extend the stipulated date in all such notifications up to December 31, 2017," an order dated September 26 said.

The extension stands the same fo rEmployees under Employees' Pension Scheme of 1995 and students wanting to avail scholarships besides enrolling for national apprenticeship and skill development schemes and crop insurance schemes and Atal Pension Yojana.

"It is hereby clarified that this extension shall only apply to those beneficiaries who are not assigned Aadhaar number or those who have not yet enrolled for Aadhaar. Such beneficiaries are required to enrol for Aadhaar by December 31, 2017and provide their Aadhaar number or enrolment ID," it had said.

It must be noted that after government made it compuslory to link 12-digit Aadhaar issued by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI),  many telecom operators including Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have been sending messages to its customers for linking their Aadhaar with phone number. Even banks have been informing their customers to link their Aadhaar numbers with bank accounts to avoid making them inoperational.