In Bengal, only 31.88% children below five years have Aadhaar cards

Only 31.88 percent of children below the age of five have got their Aadhaar cards in Bengal, due to the inordinate delay by the Centre in making Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) the sole agency in the state for issuing the unique identification numbers.

According to an officer in the state Home department, the task of giving Aadhaar cards to children below five years in the state had started only six months ago.

The reason being there was no way out to give Aadhaar cards to them when the enrolments of residents and collection of biometric data was carried out

under the National Population Register (NPR) of the Union Home Ministry.

The process of issuing Aadhaar cards to children below five started in Bengal just six months ago.

This comes at a time when the Modi government had earlier decided to make Aadhaar cards mandatory for students to avail midday meals.

However, the Centre on Tuesday decided to continue to give the benefits against alternate means of identification, after facing flak over its decision.

Bengal was one of the 12 states which were under the NPR till mid-2015, while the task in rest of the states and Union Territories had been undertaken by UIDAI.

"The progress of work by the NPR was much slower compared to that of the UIDAI. As a result, Bengal is lagging much behind than many other states in terms of issuing Aadhaar cards. Moreover, it was not possible to give Aadhaar cards to children below five years," the officer said.

He added that NPR was the sole agency in Bengal till July 2016. Both NPR and UIDAI started working simultaneously in the state from July to December 2016.

It was from January 2017 when UIDAI completely took charge.

While 31.88 percent of children below five years have been issued Aadhaar cards, 72.73 percent of the population between the ages of five to 18 years have been issued Aadhaar in the state.

More interestingly, going as per projected population, 102.68 percent of people above the age of 18 have been issued Aadhaar.

Projected population is the population calculated after assuming a six percent increase in population each year in the state after the last census has been carried out.

Meanwhile, the average percentage of the Aadhaar cards given to people of all ages in the state stands at 89 percent.

According to a comparative data released on February 28, Bengal is at the 24th position out of the 36 states and Union Territories, in terms of issuing Aadhaar cards.

The state is much behind Delhi (118 percent), Haryana (103 percent), Telangana (102 percent), Punjab (102 percent), Himachal Pradesh (101 percent), Lakshadweep (101 percent) and Chandigarh (100 percent).

Assam is at the 36th position, with only 7 percent of people having Aadhaar cards, preceded by Meghalaya with 9 percent.