FASTag

Ministry of Road Transport & Highways circular dated 15th January, 2020. FASTag rules relaxed for 65 high cash tollways for one month.

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has decided to relax the conditions regarding declaration of FASTag Fee lanes for 30 days from today at the identified 65 high cash transactions fee plazas of NHAI. The concerned fee plazas have been allowed to convert up to 25 per cent of all fee lanes to hybrid (cash plus FASTag) lanes during this time.

The move comes in the wake of NHAI raising concerns regarding high cash transactions on its 65 identified fee plazas. NHAI has pointed out that most of the fee plazas are functioning with one hybrid lane on each side and while efforts are being made to bring more fee plazas within the ambit, the said identified fee plazas were facing heavy traffic rush on the hybrid lanes.

With a view to save the citizens from inconvenience, the Ministry has decided that depending on the traffic pile up at these 65 fee plazas, not more than 25 percent FASTag lane of Fee Plaza may be temporarily converted to hybrid lanes.  This is to be considered and decided on a case to case basis not below the level of the RO concerned. In a directive issued to NHAI in this regard, the Ministry has said that daily evaluation of such cases be made to take necessary corrective action and a summary report on daily basis be sent to the Ministry. 

The Ministry has further asked NHAI to ensure that the least possible number of the declared FASTag lane of Fee Plaza be converted into the hybrid lanes temporarily and further that at least 75% lanes of these 65 fee plaza remain declared and operational as ‘FASTag lane of Fee Plaza’ in order to incentivize the vehicles carrying FASTag.

The Ministry has emphasized that this temporary measure is to be adopted for 30 days only for such 65 fee plazas to facilitate smooth flow of traffic so that no inconvenience is caused to the citizens. NHAI shall take necessary measures within this time to ensure smooth flow of traffic through the fee plazas and ensure declaring “FASTag lane of Fee Plaza” for all the lanes within this period.

List of 65 fee plazas of NHAI with relaxation of 30 days wef 15th January 2020
S.no.	PLAZA NAME	RO	PIU
1	Sadahalli	Bangalore	Bangalore
2	Vadodara	Gandhinagar	Ahmedabad
3	Boriach	Gandhinagar	Surat
4	Gharonda Toll Plaza	Chandigarh	Ambala
5	Electronic City Elevated: 1) Bangalore Up Ramp @ chainage KM 18/000	Bangalore	Ramnagara
6	Bhagwada	Gandhinagar	Surat
7	Ladowal Toll Plaza	Chandigarh	Ambala
8	Bharthana/ Karjan	Gandhinagar	Bharuch
9	Khaniwade	Gandhinagar	Surat
10	Chandimandir Toll Plaza	Chandigarh	Chandigarh
11	Choriyasi	Gandhinagar	Surat
12	Jaladhulagori toll plaza	Kolkata	Kolkata
13	Charoti	Gandhinagar	Surat
14	Sambhu Toll Plaza	Chandigarh	Ambala
15	L&T PANIPAT	Chandigarh	Ambala
16	Rajchandrapur Toll Plaza	Kolkata	Kolkata
17	Khed-Shivapur	Mumbai	Pune
18	Khedki Daula	Delhi	Gurgaon
19	dapar	Chandigarh	Mohali
20	Krishnagiri	Chennai	Krishnagiri
21	Taswade	Mumbai	Kolhapur
22	Kumbalam	Kerala	Coachin
23	Narmada Bridge	Gandhinagar	Bharuch
24	Towards Bangalore Km.26.075	Bangalore	Bangalore
25	Vikravandi	Chennai	Villupuram
26	Palliyekarra	Kerala	Palakkad
27	Ring Road	Gandhinagar	Ahmedabad
28	beharmpur	Chandigarh	Mohali
29	Kini	Mumbai	Kolhapur
30	Omallur	Chennai	Salem
31	Sengurichi	Madurai	Trichy
32	Ahmedpur	Lucknow - East	Lucknow
33	Anewadi	Mumbai	Pune
34	Brijghat	Lucknow - West	Moradabad
35	Samayapuram	Madurai	Trichy
36	Doddakarernahalli (Nelamangala Toll) Karekal Cross	Bangalore	Hassan
37	Kaniyur	Chennai	Coimbatore
38	Pantagi	Hyderabad	Hyderabad
39	Dankuni	Kolkata	Durgapur
40	Ahmedabad	Gandhinagar	Ahmedabad
41	Vijayamangalam	Chennai	Salem
42	Nawabganj	Lucknow - East	Lucknow
43	Towards Nelamangala Km.14.875	Bangalore	Bangalore
44	Manguli	Bhubaneswar	Bhubaneswar
45	Palayam	Chennai	Salem
46	Raikal	Hyderabad	Hyderabad
47	Dhareri Jattan	Chandigarh	Mohali
48	Paranur	Chennai	Kancheepuram
49	Thirumandurai	Madurai	Trichy
50	Moratandi	Chennai	Villupuram
51	Attibele Grade section Toll Plaza at km 32/700	Bangalore	Ramnagara
52	Kodai	Madurai	Madurai
53	Vaiguntham	Chennai	Salem
54	Negadiya	Jaipur	Udaipur
55	Karabylu(Bellur Toll)	Bangalore	Hassan
56	Gegal	Jaipur	Ajmer
57	Anand	Gandhinagar	Ahmedabad
58	Ronahi	Lucknow - East	Lucknow
59	Barajod (earlier Sikandara )	Lucknow - West	Kanpur
60	Bharudi	Gandhinagar	Rajkot
61	Kishangarh	Jaipur	Jaipur
62	Vasad	Gandhinagar	Ahmedabad
63	Borkhedi	Nagpur	Nagpur
64	Hoskote	Bangalore	Bangalore
65	Samakhiyali	Gandhinagar	Gandhidham

e-CSIN

The Institute of Company Secretaries of India has once again extended the last date for employed company secretaries to obtain their e-CSIN, an online identification number at their portal from 15th January 2020 to 29th February 2020. This is required in case of those company secretaries in respect of whom the erstwhile form 32 under the old companies act or the form DIR-12 under the new companies act was filed with the ministry of corporate affairs. 

LODR amendment - CMD post

SEBI has vide an amendment dated 10th January, 2020 to the Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements, 2015 (LODR) required that the chairperson of top 500 listed entities as per market capitalisation shall be a non executive director and not related to the MD or CEO as per the definition of relative within the Companies Act, 2013 with effect from 1st April, 2022. The earlier stipulation was that this was to be enforced from 1st April, 2020 onwards.

The relevant SEBI circular can be found here

compliances for Drone Operators

PIB press release dated 13th January 2020 on the need for drone operators to register their drones with the agency. There is a portal in which they need to register and they will be given some unique identification numbers. All this to be done by 31st January, 2020.

In order to facilitate the identification of civil drones and drone operators, a one-time opportunity for voluntary disclosure of such drones and drone operators is now being provided by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA). The persons in possession of drones are required to submit the information to the government, starting from 14^th January 2020 by visiting the Digital Sky portal at https://digitalsky.dgca.gov.in. Drones and Drones operators have to obtain Unique Identification Number (UIN), Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) and other operational requirements as per the guidelines issued by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) which regulates the use of drones in the Indian Airspace.

It was brought to the notice of the Government of India that such drones and drone operators are not complying with the CAR mentioned abovThe conditions of No Permission-No Takeoff (NPNT) as envisaged in the aforesaid CAR are not mandatory for this purpose whereas if drones are operated without due permission, the aforesaid process of CAR is violated. The deadline to submit the required information to the Government is 31^st January 2020.

On successful submission of voluntary disclosure of possessing drone, a Drone Acknowledgement Number (DAN) and an Ownership Acknowledgement Number (OAN) will be issued online which will assist in validation of operations of drones in India. However, the DAN or OAN does not confer any right to operate a drone(s) in India, if it does not fulfill the provisions given in the CAR. Further, ownership of drone(s) in India without a valid DAN or OAN shall invite penal action as per applicable laws.

Any clarification or additional information in this regard may be sought from Digital Sky Help desk at support-digisky@gov.in. 

investment advisers in IFSC

SEBI has vide its circular dated 9th January, 2020 issued operating guidelines for investment advisers in International Financial Services Centre including net worth requirements, qualifications, annual compliance audit etc.

https://www.sebi.gov.in/legal/circulars/jan-2020/operating-guidelines-for-investment-advisers-in-international-financial-services-centre_45620.html

KYC - video verification process

RBI circular dated 9th January, 2020 wherein they have allowed video based customer identification process (CIP) to establish the KYC of the clients being on boarded. Elaborate rules have been laid down for the same purpose, including procedure for carrying out live CIP, software & security audit of the live CIP process, etc. All accounts to be opened under live CIP shall be done only after concurrent audit to ensure robustness of the process.

This is supposed to be ease of doing business, but as we have seen from the past experiences, it becomes anything but that. Increasingly, it is becoming difficult to open a bank a/c inside of 3 weeks from the banks, but yet as we have seen, instances of fraud are being committed by the bank's employees themselves as we have seen in the PNB and PMC Bank fiasco.

RBI circular follows

https://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=11783&Mode=0

Government of India, vide Gazette Notification G.S.R. 582(E) dated August 19, 2019 and Gazette Notification G.S.R. 840(E) dated November 13, 2019, has notified amendment to the Prevention of Money-laundering (Maintenance of Records) Rules, 2005. Further, with a view to leveraging the digital channels for Customer Identification Process (CIP) by Regulated Entities (REs), the Reserve Bank has decided to permit Video based Customer Identification Process (V-CIP) as a consent based alternate method of establishing the customer’s identity, for customer onboarding.

2. The consequent changes carried out in the Master Direction on KYC dated February 25, 2016, with the aforementioned amendments to the PML Rules and V-CIP are as under:

A. Changes due to amendments to the PML Rules

a) “Digital KYC” has been defined in Section 3 as capturing live photo of the customer and officially valid document or the proof of possession of Aadhaar, where offline verification cannot be carried out, along with the latitude and longitude of the location where such live photo is being taken by an authorised officer of the Reporting Entity (RE) as per the provisions contained in the Act. Steps to carry out the Digital KYC process have also been stipulated.

b) “Equivalent e-document” has been defined in Section 3 as an electronic equivalent of a document, issued by the issuing authority of such document with its valid digital signature including documents issued to the digital locker account of the customer as per Rule 9 of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries Providing Digital Locker Facilities) Rules, 2016.

c) Section 16 has been amended and accordingly,

I. customer, for the purpose of Customer Due Diligence CDD) process, shall submit:

1. the Aadhaar number where he is desirous of receiving any benefit or subsidy under any scheme notified under section 7 of the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (18 of 2016); or he decides to submit his Aadhaar number voluntarily to a banking company or any reporting entity notified under first proviso to sub-section (1) of section 11A of the PML Act; or
2. the proof of possession of Aadhaar number where offline verification can be carried out; or
3. the proof of possession of Aadhaar number where offline verification cannot be carried out or
4. any Officially Valid Document (OVD) or the equivalent e-document thereof containing the details of his identity and address; and
5. the Permanent Account Number or the equivalent e-document thereof or Form No. 60 as defined in Income-tax Rules, 1962; and
6. such other documents including in respect of the nature of business and financial status of the client, or the equivalent e-documents thereof as may be required by the RE.

II. Provided that where the customer has submitted

1. Aadhaar number under paragraph (c.I.i) above to a bank or to a RE notified under first proviso to sub-section (1) of section 11A of the PML Act, such bank or RE shall carry out authentication of the customer’s Aadhaar number using e-KYC authentication facility provided by the Unique Identification Authority of India.
2. proof of possession of Aadhaar under clause (c.I.ii) above where offline verification can be carried out, the RE shall carry out offline verification
3. an equivalent e-document of any OVD, the RE shall verify the digital signature as per the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (21 of 2000) and any rules issues thereunder and take a live photo as specified under Annex I of the Master Direction.
4. proof of possession of Aadhaar number where offline verification cannot be carried out under clause (c.I.iii) above or any OVD under clause (c.I.iv), the RE shall carry out verification through digital KYC as specified under Annex I of the Master Direction.
   Provided, for a period not beyond such date as may be notified by the Government for a class of REs, instead of carrying out digital KYC, the RE pertaining to such class may obtain a certified copy of the proof of possession of Aadhaar number or the OVD and a recent photograph where an equivalent e-document is not submitted.

III. Equivalent e-document has also been permitted for accounts of non-individual customer.

IV. Where a customer has provided his Aadhaar number under paragraph (c.I.i) above for identification and wants to provide a current address, different from the address as per the identity information available in the Central Identities Data Repository, he may give a self-declaration to that effect to the Regulated Entity.

B. Changes due to introduction of Video based Customer Identification Process (V-CIP)

a) Definition of V-CIP has been inserted in Section 3 of the Master Direction

b) The process of V-CIP has been specified in Section 18 in terms of which, REs may undertake live V-CIP, to be carried out by an official of the RE, for establishment of an account based relationship with an individual customer, after obtaining his informed consent and shall adhere to the following stipulations:

i. The official of the RE performing the V-CIP shall record video as well as capture photograph of the customer present for identification and obtain the identification information as below:

• Banks: can use either OTP based Aadhaar e-KYC authentication or Offline Verification of Aadhaar for identification. Further, services of Business Correspondents (BCs) may be used by banks for aiding the V-CIP.
• REs other than banks: can only carry out Offline Verification of Aadhaar for identification.

ii. RE shall capture a clear image of PAN card to be displayed by the customer during the process, except in cases where e-PAN is provided by the customer. The PAN details shall be verified from the database of the issuing authority.

iii. Live location of the customer (Geotagging) shall be captured to ensure that customer is physically present in India

iv. The official of the RE shall ensure that photograph of the customer in the Aadhaar/PAN details matches with the customer undertaking the V-CIP and the identification details in Aadhaar/PAN shall match with the details provided by the customer.

v. The official of the RE shall ensure that the sequence and/or type of questions during video interactions are varied in order to establish that the interactions are real-time and not pre-recorded.

vi. In case of offline verification of Aadhaar using XML file or Aadhaar Secure QR Code, it shall be ensured that the XML file or QR code generation date is not older than 3 days from the date of carrying out V-CIP.

vii. All accounts opened through V-CIP shall be made operational only after being subject to concurrent audit, to ensure the integrity of process.

viii. RE shall ensure that the process is a seamless, real-time, secured, end-to-end encrypted audiovisual interaction with the customer and the quality of the communication is adequate to allow identification of the customer beyond doubt. RE shall carry out the liveliness check in order to guard against spoofing and such other fraudulent manipulations.

ix. To ensure security, robustness and end to end encryption, the REs shall carry out software and security audit and validation of the V-CIP application before rolling it out.

x. The audiovisual interaction shall be triggered from the domain of the RE itself, and not from third party service provider, if any. The V-CIP process shall be operated by officials specifically trained for this purpose. The activity log along with the credentials of the official performing the V-CIP shall be preserved.

xi. REs shall ensure that the video recording is stored in a safe and secure manner and bears the date and time stamp.

xii. REs are encouraged to take assistance of the latest available technology, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and face matching technologies, to ensure the integrity of the process as well as the information furnished by the customer. However, the responsibility of customer identification shall rest with the RE.

xiii. RE shall ensure to redact or blackout the Aadhaar number in terms of Section 16.

xiv. BCs can facilitate the process only at the customer end and as already stated in para B(b) above, the official at the other end of V-CIP interaction should necessarily be a bank official. Banks shall maintain the details of the BC assisting the customer, where services of BCs are utilized. The ultimate responsibility for customer due diligence will be with the bank.

3. The Master Direction on KYC dated February 25, 2016, is hereby updated to reflect the above changes and shall come into force with immediate effect.