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Punjab based diversified company Trident Group today became the first corporate to use Aadhaar number for salary disbursal to its employees to avoid fake data.
The programme was launched here by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Chairman of Unique Identification of India (UIDAI) Nandan Nilekani and chairman of Trident Group, Rajinder Gupta.
"Salary of employees of Trident Group has been transferred to their Aadhaar linked bank accounts leveraging Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB)," an official statement said.
Gupta said linking Aadhaar number to the salary accounts of the employees will help the company in saving verfication cost and weed out fake data.
"The data base is with us, which is authentic as one person has one unique identity. It has really saved us in terms of our verification cost, saves us on recruitment cost, saves in terms of fake data," Gupta said.
The company will also use Aadhaar numbers in its recruitment process.
Gupta said by launching this initiative, the company will eliminate the risk of having employeed the same person who might be working under various names.
"Use of APB for transferring salary will provide transparent mechanism to check the outflow of cash benefit to the accounts of individual and enables reconciliation of accounts and ensures that there is no duplication, falsificaiton in transfer of salaries to identified employees," Ahluwalia said.
Nilekani said the Aadhaar plaform can be used by government, corporate establishments as well as individual consumers to streamline electronic payment and reduce fraud.
"I think the fact that they (Trident Group) have used that (Aadhaar number), and it is helping them to reduce fraud in the system to make sure that people don't apply under different names to make their salary payment streamline."
Nilekani was hopeful that in the coming years, more institutions will incorporate Aadhaar in their system and mitigate corruption.
"I want to really emphasise that Aadhar platfrom is the biggest anti-corruption platform in the world and we must recognise the value of it as an anti corruption platform."
Trident is the diversified business group which is into many sectors, including chemical, paper, energy, information technology and textile. The group employees about 10,000 people, according to data on its website.
APB is a system that facilitates seamless transfer of payments to Aadhaar Enabled Bank Account (AEBA). It is a payment gateway platform created by National Payments Corporation of India.
It was used for the first time on 1 January 2013, when Direct Benefit Transfer was launched by central government for disbursal of various government benefits.
