Aadhaar Of Injustice

Linking it to ration cards ends up denying poor their rightful entitlements

Written by Anjali Bhardwaj , Amrita Johri | Published: January 11, 2018 12:06 am

linking aadhaar to ration cards, Aadhaar linking, Aadhaar card, UID, Narendra Modi government, Indian express column

Aadhaar can, at best, tackle only identity fraud, where an individual colludes with the system to be included multiple times in the list of beneficiaries.

In September 2017, 11-year-old Santoshi, resident of Simdega district of Jharkhand, succumbed to starvation. According to her mother, she died “asking for rice, but there was not a single grain at home”. She was deprived of her subsidised ration as her family’s ration card was cancelled because it was not linked to Aadhaar. Marandi in Jharkhand met the same fate — he could not avail of his share of ration supplies since his Aadhaar Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) failed. Similar cases of starvation deaths have been reported from other states too, including Shakina Ashfaq from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, who could not present herself at the ration shop for ABBA due to ill health.