Mangaluru : M.R. Ravi, Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat Chief Executive Officer, on Tuesday asked banks in the district to complete Aadhaar-seeding of bank accounts of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme by March 31.

More than 10,000 bank accounts, out of about 84,000, are yet to be Aadhaar-seeded, the CEO said, pointing out that the failure to do so will affect direct benefit transfer of MNREGA wages to beneficiaries.

Mr. Ravi was chairing the meeting of district consultative committee on banks here.

The CEO asked banks concerned to speed up the opening of branches in 22 identified villages that have a population more than 5,000. The banks were able to open only three branches out of 25. He expressed doubts over whether government’s aim to declare 81 villages in the district cashless would succeed in such a situation.

The plight of a sex worker, who had intended to start an avocation of her own to come out of the trade, at the hands of a bank, was brought out in the meeting. The bank concerned had been delaying sanctioning a loan to the woman seeking several documents, the meeting was informed.

Taking strong exception to the bank’s attitude, Mr. Ravi said banks should be humane. They also need to honour government schemes of rehabilitation, he said and warned that abnormal delay in providing service amounts to corruption too.

District lead bank manager Raghava Yajamanya informed the meeting that as on December 2016, Dakshina Kannada had 641 bank branches. Deposits stood at Rs 38,521 crore and advances at Rs 20,752 crore registering year-on-year growth of 12.77% and 2.51% respectively.

RBI’s assistant general manager Gopinath, Nabard’s DGM S. Ramesh and others were present.