“Untraced addresses” plague Aadhaar card project in the state. Post offices have sent back nearly 50,000 Aadhaar cards to the UIDAI stating that they could not trace the addresses. This has led to complaints that Aadhaar cards were registered with fake addresses. Interestingly, majority of the cards that were sent back were issued in Hyderabad. These cards are lying undelivered with several post offices in the city for nearly a year.
The postal department has communicated to the civil supplies department expressing its inability to deliver Aadhaar cards due to wrong addresses and informed that it has returned them to UIDAI. The civil supplies department is the nodal agency for implementing the Aadhaar project in the state. Following this, the department has directed all the enrolment agencies to be extra cautious while submitting address details of people in the online system during the second phase of Aadhaar enrolments, which began recently, after a two-and-a-half month break, in February.
“People not residing in the addresses specified can be understood for reasons like shifting from rented houses, transfer of jobs etc. But, the non-existence of addresses itself is a serious issue. This shows that the enrolment agencies have submitted Aadhaar online details without verifying correct addresses,” said an official of civil supplies department. Though the UIDAI had established about 3,000 enrolment centres in AP, till date only 3.5 crore people have been enrolled and around 4 crore people are yet to be enrolled.
In Hyderabad, the centres have managed to enrol nearly 42 lakh citizens. Over 8 lakh people in the city are yet to be enrolled, though most of those who have enrolled are yet to receive their cards. In addition, people who already enrolled for the cards a year ago have not received them so far. The enrolment agencies are not maintaining a serial number for people who belong to the same family. With this, while some members within the same family have got cards, others did not.
The helpline provided by UIDAI is also not serving the desired purpose with people complaining that it was confined to register only complaints and no solution is being provided for getting Aadhaar cards.