UIDAI allows Bharti Airtel for conducting Aadhaar based re-verification till March 31

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has extended its grant to Bharti Airtel for conducting Aadhaar based re-verification of its mobile subscribers, till March 31.

However, UIDAI has not lifted the ongoing suspension on Airtel Payments Bank's eKYC license, PTI reported.

"We would like to confirm that UIDAI vide its interim order dated January 10, 2018, has allowed Bharti Airtel Limited to continue Aadhaar based e-KYC services till March 31, 2018, the telco said in a BSE filing.

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Airtel further said, "The company continues to engage with the authorities to achieve a final closure of the matter."

Last year in December, the Aadhaar issuing body UIDAI barred the telco on temporarily bases from conducting SIM verification of mobile customers using e-KYC process, and e-KYC of payments bank clients but it allowed Airtel to conduct services till January 10.

In fact, Airtel's CEO, Gopal Vittal sent out a letter to all employees in which he mentioned about the lapses in its governance of the customer authentication process.

He said, "The biggest lesson for me is that we could have handled the situation in a far better way. I would like to point out several things we could have done differently. First, we could have acted faster. If customers were inconvenienced, we knew. And we should have done something about it immediately. Second, we could have been far more responsive to the concerns of key Government departments. Third, we could have shown urgency relating to the spirit of compliance even if we adhered to the letter behind compliance."

"Airtel Payments Bank has served over 50 million customers and has seen a transaction throughput of almost 3000 crores per month and growing and the events relating to UIDAI have filled me with a profound sense of regret and disappointment for the situation that we find ourselves in," Vittal added.