No Aadhaar means no salary for Kerala employees
Kerala has become the first Indian state to make Aadhaar mandatory for all Govt. employees, who are working in the state. No Aadhaar means no attendance, and no salary as well.
This is an interesting move by Left-ruled Kerala, as they have been opposing vehemently against the implementation of Aadhaar.
What changed suddenly?
Kerala Govt: No Aadhaar, Means No Salary
Kerala CM, Pinarayi Vijayan, has issued order that every Govt. employee in the state will have their salary and attendance based on Aadhaar.
RIght from a peon to the secretary of state, from Govt. school teacher to Govt. clerk, every Kerala Govt. employee will use Aadhaar enabled biometric system to punch in their attendance, which will be directly linked with their salaries.
The order states: “The Aadhaar-based biometric punching system should be set up in SPARK (Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala) linked disbursal of salaries in all government offices, education centres.”
Is This Financially Feasible?
There are 5.6 lakh Govt. employees in Kerala, and this rule will be executed for all.
However, there are expenses associated with the usage of Aadhaar, and this can pose a problem.
In March, UIDAI, the nodal authority of Aadhaar, had notified that Rs 20 per eKYC will be charged for using Aadhaar as the base, and Rs 0.50 paisa for authentication every Aadhaar based authentication.
This means, Kerala Govt. will spend Re 1 for every Govt. employee, for punching in their attendance: That’s Rs 5.6 lakh, per day expense, as there will be twice such activity in a day.
Left Is Supporting Aadhaar? How Did This Happen?
Kerala is right now governed by Left Democratic Front (LDF), which has vehemently opposed Aadhaar since day 1.
Binoy Viswam, a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (CPI) was the first to approach Courts against making Aadhaar compulsory for filing returns.
There has been no response from Binoy after Kerala CM passed this order of making Aadhaar mandatory.
Kerala’s Finance Minister Thomas Isaac too hasn’t made any statement. As per some rumors, not everyone in the Kerala Govt. supported this Aadhaar rule. A senior official from Finance Ministry stated, “This was not discussed with the minister. This was not a cabinet decision,”
There is complete silence on this matter from the Govt. officials, as the order was totally unexpected.
Last year, Bombay High Court has specifically stated that no salary can be stopped, if the bank accounts are not linked with Aadhaar.
Hence, this Kerala Govt. order directly violated Bombay High Court decision.
We will keep you updated, as more details come in.