For the first time in the country, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will collate the Aadhar details of the dead residents of Srivilliputtur Taluk of Virudhunagar district in order to prevent misuse of those Aadhar numbers.
Deputy Director General of UIDAI, Bengaluru, R.S. Gopalan, held a meeting with the officials of Virudhunagar district, chaired by Collector R. Kannan, with regard to implementation of the pilot project.
Mr. Gopalan said that the data of UIDAI has been linked only with the birth register. “So far, it has not been linked with the death register,” he said.
Stating that any Aadhar number would not be repeated or re-assigned for 100 years, he said collation of Aadhar numbers of the dead residents had not been done so far. “Once, this process of collation of Aadhar numbers of the dead residents is done, we will prohibit those numbers from authentication,” he said.
The Virudhunagar Collector said that Srivilliputtur Tahsildar will be the nodal officer for the exercise and would be assisted by the District Adi Dravida Welfare Officer.
“In the first step, list of dead persons since 2014 will be collected from all villages of Srivilliputtur Taluk. Then, it will be verified whether the dead residents had any Aadhar card or not. In the third step, these details would be sent to UIDAI for verification with its data,” Mr. Kannan said.
After UIDAI verification is done, a field verification would be carried out and finally the Aadhar numbers of the dead persons would be prohibited from authentication, thereby preventing its misuse.
Mr. Gopalan said that a total of 128 crore people of the country have been issued Aadhar cards in the last 10 years. He added that most of those who have not got their Aadhar numbers are children. Aadhar kits have been given to Integrated Child Development Scheme and Department of School Education.
Children should update their Aadhar cards after 5 years of age and 15 years of age by providing their biometrics like finger prints and iris scan.
The 55 Aadhar centres set up at the schools in Virudhunagar district are meant only for school students to process their applications seeking aadhar cards. The awareness on the importance of Aadhar is being propagated through the children and short messaging service and social media.
Mr. Gopalan said that anyone of the 25 proof of identity can be submitted for incorporating changes in the Aadhar cards.
Instead of giving Aadhar card numbers, people can generate a 16-digit virtual number through UIDAI website and submit them. People should not give their Aadhar card copy to anyone.
Whenever there is a need to give Aadhar number, they can hide the first 8 digits of Aadhar number and give it.
District Revenue Officer, K. Udhayakumar, and officials from Education Department and ICDS were present at the meeting.