1.28 crore school kids in UP issued Aadhaar cards

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A whopping 1.28 crore kids enrolled in 1.58 lakh government-run primary and upper primary schools besides students of up to class 8 of government-aided and recognised schools in Uttar Pradesh have been issued Aadhaar cards, said an official.

“Now, efforts are on to issue the cards to the remaining 84 lakh students of the total registered 2.12 crore at the earliest,” said Ruby Singh, secretary, Basic Education Board, that has been entrusted with the task to provide these unique identity cards to students.

The aim of the exercise is to ensure that benefits of government schemes like mid-day meals, free books, uniforms, shoes and school bags reach genuine and deserving kids.

The state will treat students enrolled without Aadhaar numbers as duplications– that is, simultaneously enrolled elsewhere– or, worse, fictitious. Aadhaar-linking is also expected to help detect and eliminate duplication and yield more accurate data on enrolments.

Singh added that “Officials of five districts, including Ballia, Gonda, Siddharth Nagar, Agra and Ghazipur, that were lagging at the bottom of the list with hardly 10% compliance have been asked to complete the process at the earliest.”

Singh had shot off a missive to basic shiksha adhikaris (BSAs) of these districts on August 27.

The state government had on July 3, 2017 nominated the basic education department as nodal agency for Aadhaar registration of students.

The responsibility of this was finally entrusted to Basic Education Board.

Recently additional chief secretary Renuka Kumar wrote to all district magistrates and instructed them to speed up the process.

For getting the Aadhaar cards, the board has been allotted 1644 kits and out of these around 500 have already been sent to different districts, education department officials said.

The officials and the staff of the basic education department have also been given training in the task of collecting the vital information and completing the process that started from October 2018.

As per the records available with the board, Varanasi, Kushinagar, Budaun, Gorakhpur, Aligarh and Shrawasti have so far been able to make cards of 10% to 20% of the total enrolled kids while Deoria, Firozabad, Balrampur, Pratapgarh, Rampur, Azamgarh, and Bahraich have been able to make Aadhaar cards of 20% to 40% of the total kids.

The aim is to ensure that benefits of government schemes like mid-day meals, free books, uniforms, shoes and school bags reach genuine kids.

The state will treat students enrolled without Aadhaar numbers as duplications– that is, simultaneously enrolled elsewhere– or, worse, fictitious. Aadhaar-linking is also expected to help detect and eliminate duplication and yield more accurate data on enrolments.