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The fact that Airtel opened Payment Bank accounts without consent is wrong and needs to be dealt with strongly. However, the credit of LPG subsidy to such account is not the handiwork of Airtel. It is a basic flaw in the system of LPG subsidy credit for which the concerned agencies/UIDAI themselves are responsible. The LPG subsidy gets credited to the last bank account that has been linked with Adhaar, irrespective of whatever bank account a customer has opted to receive subsidy given in his written application. This has been faced and reported by many. e.g. If a customer has an account in SBI and linked it to Adhaar and then given a written application to receive subsidy in that account, the subsidy is expected to be credited to that account only. But if 3 months later, he linked his second account (say with PNB) with adhaar then the subsidy would start getting credited to PNB instead of SBI, without the consent of the customer and even without any intimation to the customer. Now further 3 months later, if he opens an account in ICICI with the same Adhaar, the subsidy would start getting credited to ICICI, again without his consent and without any intimation. This is a known issue and people have raised complaints against it but UIDAI has done nothing on this. So it is the concerned agencies and UIDAI who are responsible for the credit of the Rs.167 Cr to Airtel payments bank.

Yes you are absolutely right - in fact linking bank and linking subsidy should have been provisioned separately by UIDAI. It should be left to the consumer to decide in which bank he wants subsidy to get deposited irrespective of the number & chronological order of the Banks linking with UIDAI. This problem should be addressed as soon as possible since earlier we were suppose to link only the bank in which we want subsidy but unfortunately without giving enough time the government came up with the plan of linking all accounts with Aadhaar causing much confusion and dismay.