Aadhaar link: Andhra Pradesh officials spar

Vijayawada: Differences among bureaucrats have come to the fore in implementation of digital literacy programme, organised to promote cashless transactions.

The bureaucrats who were on Bandar Road on Wednesday night had faced a lot of problems in exercising the cashless transactions and a majority of them have shared their anger over few other bureaucrats, who have driven the Chief Minister towards directing the bankers to integrate Aadhaar with e-POS machines.

One junior IAS officer, who had visited a restaurant on Bandar Road tried to carry out transaction, and after futile attempts went away from there. Without keeping technical things ready, a few bureaucrats have tried to paint a rosy picture before the CM and this led to confusion.

“The whole exercise became a mess as the Chief Minister was wrongly briefed about the Aadhaar enabled e-POS machines,” a junior IAS officer told this correspondent.

The officer also questioned as to what was the hurry in implementing the same, without cross checking the technical flaws in the programme, regarding integrating the bank accounts with Aadhaar numbers of individuals.

Another senior IAS who has been to digital shopping had a similar kind of experience on both the days at two different places.

“I didn’t reveal my identity while going for e-POS transactions. The accountants of the restaurants I visited these two days had faced difficulty, as the machines were facing technical glitches,” he said and added that everytime they had to login for the transaction, which delayed transactions forcing people to stand for more time in a queue.

An IAS officer, from Vijayawada, became impatient as a famous restaurant on Bandar Road, which the officer’s team had visited on Wednesday night, also had a similar kind of difficulty. The team had to wait for at least 45 minutes to complete the Aadhaar-enabled transaction.