In a meeting this month, finance ministry officials also asked the Reserve Bank of India to suggest a time frame for the consolidation, the people said, asking not be named as the information isn’t public. The move is aimed at creating fewer, better-capitalized lenders and improving regulatory oversight.

Supreme Court lashed at the government over the hub and observed that it will be “like creating a surveillance state”. On August 24 last year, a nine-judge bench of the Apex Court declared that privacy is a constitutional right.

The ‘bail-in’ clause was included in the bill as one of the tools for resolution for bank failure. It provides for depositors to bear a part of the cost of the resolution by corresponding reduction in their claims

It prescribes monetary penalty and jail term which could be extended up to 10 years for duping gullible depositors. The monetary penalty could be as high as Rs 50 crore. The government has proposed these stringent provisions in wake of several ponzi schemes where gullible investors, mostly poor people, were defrauded of amounts running into thousands of crores of rupees.