"What's unique about it? Even our birthdays are the same now"
Almost every member of 800 families in Uttarakhand's Gaindi Kahat village have the same date of birth on their Aadhar cards – a blunder that undermines the government’s claim that the unique biometric Identification card that is being mandatory is foolproof.
The factual inaccuracies in Aadhaar programme, which was originally conceived to give India’s poor an identity to gain access to government services, has shocked the villages.
"What's unique about it? Even our birthdays are the same now," a local was quoted as saying to The Times of India.
The residents of the village located 20 km from Haridwar have expressed disappointment over the falsification of such important data even after submitting relevant proofs like voter ID cards and ration cards to the privacy agency that was making Aadhar cards for them, said the TOI report.
In one case, a grandmother's age was put as 22 while some children's ages had been listed anywhere between 15 and 60.
This is not the first incident where such errors have occured in the country. A couple of days ago, 100 farmers in the drought hit state of Maharashtra were reported to have received same Aadhar number.
Officials of some banks also admitted that the data they received from the online registration portal doesn’t match with the data intheir records.
The names of some farmers are missing and some do not match with the land size or type of loan.
The government had said that the Aadhaar-based linking will avoid any duplication as well as fake accounts getting the benefit of the loan waiver.