No one will be deprived of benefits for lack of Aadhaar: Govt

The move to mandate Aadhaar for midday meals evoked criticism from opposition parties

The Centre today clarified that no benefit would be stopped for want of Aadhaar number and citizens can avail all the benefits of government schemes on producing alternate means of identification till the time they get their Aadhaar number.

"No one will be deprived of the benefits for lack of Aadhaar... Till Aadhaar number is assigned to any individual, the benefit will continue to be given based on alternate means of identification," according to a statement issued by the Cabinet Secretariat.

Aadhaar has so far been given to more than 112 crore people in the country.

"In case of Mid-Day Meal scheme and under the Integrated Child Development Scheme, the schools and Anganwadis have been asked to collect the Aadhaar number of the children beneficiaries and in case a child does not have Aadhaar, the school or ICDS functionary will be required to provide enrolment facilities to a child and till Aadhaar number is assigned, the benefits will continue," the statement said.

Recently, the government faced a lot of flak for making Aadhaar mandatory for availing benefits for socially relevant schemes like mid-day meal scheme and Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) with critics alleging that the step is meant to curtail the benefits. The circular was also said to be in violation of Supreme Court guidelines.

The Centre meanwhile clarified that considering the usefulness of Aadhaar in curbing leakages and bringing transparency in delivery system, the government has recently issued orders to use Aadhaar in several other welfare schemes funded from the Consolidated Fund of India.

"While these orders require beneficiaries of these programmes to give their Aadhaar number, it has also been ensured that no one is deprived of the benefits for want of Aadhaar," it said.

Total savings by plugging leakages on account of Aadhaar introduction during the last two-and-a-half years in just a few schemes amount to over Rs 49,000 crore.

Meanwhile, in a related development, some Delhi-based activists today urged the Delhi government not to make compulsory the use of Aadhaar-linked PoS machines at its fair price shops, alleging that its pilot study on 42 outlets is a "failure".

Activist Amrita Johri said the government claimed to have zero failure rate of biometric authentication using Aadhaar, but in a social audit "we have found that around 80 per cent of the people who were marked as 'yet to take ration' have been denied access to entitlements because of faulty biometric authentication".

"The software team told government officials in our presence that if the finger print does not match, a beneficiary will be marked by the software as 'yet to take ration' and will not be counted as failure in biometric authentication," she told reporters here.

She said that the number of fair price shops using PoS machines has come down from 42 to 18 since the pilot project was launched.

"Either the fair price shop has been shut or the shopkeeper has returned the PoS machines," she said.

"The pilot project is a failure and the Delhi government should not take it forward," Johri said.