Page 14 - Banking Finance December 2019

ROUNDUP

Centre makes Aadhaar Venkaiah Naidu nominates Manmohan Singh to par-
address change simplified liamentary committee on finance
In regard to Aadhaar, carrying out a In place of party colleague Digvijaya Singh, Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu
change of has nominated former prime minister and senior Congress
address for leader Manmohan Singh to the parliamentary standing
KYC pur- committee on finance.
poses has Digvijaya Singh has now been nominated to the parlia-
become a mentary standing committee on urban development by
simple pro- the chairman of the Upper House, according to a Rajya
cess with the government deciding Sabha bulletin.
that a self declaration will be suffi-
cient instead of any other documen- “The Rajya Sabha chairman has nominated Manmohan Singh, member, Rajya
tation. Sabha, to be a member of the committee on finance in place of Digvijaya Singh.
The chairman has also nominated Digvijaya Singh, member, Rajya Sabha, to be
The relaxed norms apply only for KYC a member of the committee on urban development,” the bulletin states.
purposes. For example, if a person
has moved residence for purposes of In accordance with the sources, Digvijay Singh resigned from the parliamen-
work and needs to open a new bank tary standing committee on finance to make way for the former prime minis-
account or change her branch, she ter. Manmohan Singh, who was the country’s finance minister between 1991
can give a self declaration of a new and 1996, was a member of the panel from September 2014 to May 2019 be-
address while retaining the original fore his tenure in the Upper House ended in June this year. In August, he was
on her Aadhaar card. elected unopposed to the Rajya Sabha from Rajasthan.
The changes have made though a In the previous tenure, the panel took up various contentious issues such as
new clause in the PML Act and not demonetisation and GST for deliberations, during which Manmohan Singh played
by way of the Aadhaar act itself. The very active role.
change applies to a person wanting
to provide a “current address”.
Atal Pension Yojana records 1.9 cr subscriber mark
Centre to make hallmark- The Atal Pension Yojana (APY) has crossed 1.9 crore subscriber mark, pension
sector regulator PFRDA said. The primary reason
ing mandatory soon for the uptick in enrollment was achievement of
Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, targets allocated to banks for opening of new APY
Food and Public accounts, it said in a statement.
Distribution, Ram
Vilas Paswan said “In this financial year, the response towards the
that the centre is enrollment of APY was overwhelming and more than 36 lakh APY accounts have
finalising a road map to make hall- been added till October 31, 2019 indicating a growth of 33 per cent in compari-
marking mandatory from December son to 26 per cent growth during the corresponding period, last fiscal," the
15. “India notified the proposed qual- Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) said.
ity control order to the WTO (World
Trade Organization) a month ago. Over half of 1.5L BSNL employees likely to take VRS
The response time for member coun- State-owned telecom major BSNL, expects more than half of its 1.55 lakh em-
tries will be over on December 8. ployees to opt for VRS, leading to a savings of Rs. 600
After that, we will make hallmarking crore per month on salary bills, once the process gets
mandatory from December 15”, completed. The company hopes to save over Rs 7,000
Paswan stated, after reviewing the crore annually and is a aiming to turn profitable in five
preparation of the roadmap to years. BSNL CMD P K Purwar said 70,000 staffers have
implement the proposed regulation.
already accepted the VRS.

14 | 2019 | DECEMBER | BANKING FINANCE