All residents of an MP village have the same date of birth on their Aadhaar

Kakra village in Madhya Pradesh’s Shivpuri district is unique in a way. Almost all the residents of this village have the same birthday, January 1, on their Aadhaar cards. Kakra is a tribal-dominated village and most residents don’t have any documents they can present as proof of age. So officials tasked with enrolling Aadhaar aspirants gave them the same date and month of birth. According to the Unique Identification Authority of India guidelines, if an individual is unable to produce proof of birth at the time of registration, he/she can still register for it without documents. If they are able to furnish proof at some point, they can get the date of birth added to their Aadhaar data. The authorities say that despite the option to update, there has hardly been any instance of someone visiting an Aadhaar centre to avail of it.

Tharoor takes on critics

The Kerala unit of the Congress had issued a show-cause notice to the party’s Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor for his laudatory comments on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but soon discovered that the parliamentarian had turned the tables on them. Last week, Tharoor had joined party colleagues Jairam Ramesh and Abhishek Manu Singhvi to state that Modi should be praised for doing the “right things”. In his reply, Tharoor took on his critics. He said he had intervened more than 50 times in Parliament and had spoken against 17 Bills with “courage and conviction”. “Can any of my critics from Kerala say they have done so?” Tharoor said. Party leaders Ramesh Chennithala, K Muraleedharan, Benny Behannan, and T N Pratapan were among those who had criticised Tharoor. A three-time MP from Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor thanked Indian Union Muslim League leader and former minister M K Muneer and Muslim Youth League President Sayyid Munavvar Ali Shihab Thangal for their support. However, a rumour campaign has started in the Congress that some of its leaders could switch to the Bharatiya Janata Party because the Modi government is thought to be facing a talent crunch.

Aadhaar for food

The Aadhaar has made lives easy for people in many ways. It has also helped the Pashupatinath temple administrators in Mandsaur district, Madhya Pradesh, to separate local devotees from outsiders. The temple administration provides free meals to devotees and was struggling to cope with the flow of visitors. The meal facility is for people who arrive from other cities and not for locals. The temple administration has made it mandatory for visitors to declare their Aadhaar number to avail of free food. The temple committee manager, Rahul Runwal, said the number of devotees who wanted to eat had come down by 50 per cent since the new system was introduced.