AIRTEL TO NPCI: WILL REPAY SUBSIDY TO BANK ACCOUNTS

Within days of getting ar a po nits knuckles, Air tel on Monday wrote to the National Payments Corporation of India and offered to return the ~190- cr ore subsidy that had flowed into the‘ unsolicited’ Payments Bank accounts of its 3.1 million mobile phone subscribers, sources said. Bharti Airtel came under fire after it allegedly opened accounts of its subscribers without their consent, and LP G subsidy worth cr or es was deposited in these accounts.

Within days of getting a rap on its knuckles, Airtel offered to return ~190- crore subsidy that had flown into the ‘unsolicited’ Payments Bank accounts of its 3100,000 mobile phone subscribers, sources said on Monday. Airtel wrote to National Payments Corporation of India ( NPCI) on Monday promising to return ~190 crore (along with interest) to the consumers’ original bank accounts that were linked to the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), the sources familiar with the development told PTI. NPCI is an umbrella organisation for all retail payments in India.

Both Airtel and Airtel Payments bank came under fire after Airtel allegedly opened accounts of its mobile phone subscribers without seeking their “informed consent”, and LPG subsidy worth crores was deposited to these accounts.

The government acted swiftly in the matter and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), in a stern move late last week, temporarily barred the company from conducting Aadhaar-based SIM verification of mobile customers using eKYC process and e-KYC of payments bank clients. Suspending the ‘e- KYC licence key’, UIDAI also ordered PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an audit to ascertain if their processes are in compliance with the Aadhaar Act.

“The government has taken a stern view of the entire issue and Airtel has been forced to return the amount to original bank account of these customers,” said a government source. The mechanism of the DBT benefits floating into the accounts is also being tightened, to bring in greater accountability, he noted.

Mounting pressure on Airtel, the state-run oil companies had begun writing to the Sunil Mittal-led firm asking it to transfer back the LPG subsidy that got credited to its payments bank accounts.

Taking a lead, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) wrote to Airtel asking it to revert the subsidy to the customers’ earlier bank account or transfer them same to the oil companies.

In a statement on Monday, HPCL said oil marketing firms and the oil ministry has been getting a large number of complaints from LPG consumers on not receiving LPG subsidy amounts into their earlier bank accounts for the past few weeks.

“In many cases across the three oil marketing companies (Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd and HPCL) where the Aadhaar linking of LPG consumers has got changed in the NPCI mapper to Airtel Payments Bank and hence the LPG subsidy is getting sent to the new bank account in the Airtel Payments Bank,” it had said.

Airtel declined to comment when asked about its offer to return ~190 crore subsidy to original bank accounts of its customers. Responding to the statement issued by HPCL, Airtel Payments Bank spokesperson said, “According to government rules, DBT subsidy goes to latest Aadhaar linked bank account. Customers can withdraw this at any of our designated outlets. No charges for such withdrawals are levied”.

However, “given that some customers have experienced inconvenience of not being aware of which bank account the DBT has gone to, we are fully committed to resolving this immediately”, it added.