Aadhaar As A Hurdle

Context: Recently, the Supreme Court termed the allegations as serious, on three crore ration cards being cancelled for not being linked with Aadhaar.

Background: While the Aadhar was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018, having penetration close to 90% of the population, it is still marred with concerns.

Concerns about failures in the use of identity verification project

• Inefficiencies and failures: In biometric authentication and updating, linking of Aadhaar with bank accounts, and use of Aadhaar payment bridge.
  • Led to inconvenience and suffering for poor: E.g. Delays in disbursal of benefits and, in many cases, in their denial due to cancellation of legitimate beneficiary names.
  • Reports from Jharkhand: On starvation deaths because of denial of benefits and subsidies.
  • Doubts about success rates of authentication and generation of “false negatives”: More so for labourers and tribal people. E.g. Those engaged in manual and hard labour, susceptible to fingerprint changes over time.
• Policy gap: Instances of people losing cards and being denied benefits.

Way forward

• Allow alternative identification: So that genuine beneficiaries are not denied due subsidies.
  • E.g. Use of other verification cards and by decentralised disbursal of services at panchayat level.