Two private bank employees were arrested from Kidderpore’s Watgunge on Wednesday after local residents complained that they were “secretly” collecting details for the National Population Register (NPR) while updating their Aadahr cards. The two employees of IndusInd Bank are in police custody for 10 days.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has contacted several banks for the online updating of Aadhar cards. Such camps were organised in an IndusInd branch of Ward no. 75 of Watgunge. Some local people alleged that the officials wrote down their Aadhar number under a column named “NPR” and when the receipt came out they saw that they had been provided with an “NPR” number in the receipt.
Following this, the local people got scared and gheraoed the officials for around two and a half hours on Tuesday. The bank authorities had to call the police who came and rescued the two. The locals calmed down only after Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim arrived and lodged a complaint against the two with police.
The two employees have reportedly said that there was confusion as some of the old forms were being used to carry out the exercise in which the column for NPR had not been struck out.
They have been arrested under charges of disobedience of an order promulgated by a public servant, criminal conspiracy and sections under the Information Technology Act. They may face of up to 10 years if the charges are proven true. Police said that they will find out whether someone else had supplied them with the forms intentionally to create trouble.
Hakim later said that the work of Aadhar updation has been stopped in all the camps following the incident. But the process will continue in banks and post offices.
[Cover photograph representational]
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