Why did the Government not ask for ID Proof during Rs 2,000 Note Exchange

 Why did the Government not ask for ID Proof during Rs 2,000 Note Exchange.

How will the banks or the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) utilize or handle the provided identification information?

Although currency notes can be exchanged at any bank, let's consider the State Bank of India (SBI) as an example. Suppose individuals visit SBI to exchange their notes, and in this scenario, the bank receives the following documents from them:

1.Three crore Aadhar Cards

2.One crore PAN Cards

3.Fifty Lakh Drivers licences

4.Thirty Lakh voter IDs

Where will the banks store these copies of the documents, and for how long will they retain them?

What benefits will these IDs provide? Will they utilize software to store this information and then verify the number of visits made by each individual to the branch? Such a task seems 

impossible.

It's important to consider that banks have limited staff.They cannot spare 2 staffs at each branch for this task which isn’t of much importance. It’s just exchange of notes.

Furthermore, it is impossible to hire new staff at all branches within such a short timeframe, specifically by tomorrow evening & then fire them after 2 months.

Also, many homeless do not have any IDs, government cannot ban them from changing their notes, just in case they have any.

In my opinion, there is no need to require ID proofs for exchanging banknotes. While it's true that this could create a loophole that some people may exploit, finding a practical solution to this problem seems challenging.

During the demonetization process in 2016, the government introduced a finger inking scheme to allow people to exchange their banknotes only once. However, this scheme turned out to be a complete failure. Bank employees refused to cooperate with such a policy because customers would argue with them about its implementation, mistakenly believing it was a decision made by the banks themselves.

I believe it would be beneficial for bank cashiers to be trained to recognize individuals who frequently come to exchange banknotes. In such instances, they can inform their supervisors, who may then request identification documents and share the information with the appropriate authorities. This is merely my assumption. What I am confident about is that cashiers will likely encourage people to deposit their banknotes into their accounts rather than exchanging them at the counter. These individuals who exchange only a few notes are not the government's primary concern; their focus is primarily on those who hoard large amounts of currency.