WEDNESDAY, 09 JANUARY 2013 22:24 AJEET TIWARI | RANCHI HITS:
There have been media reports suggesting instances of people being denied Aadhaar enrolment because of having poor or compromised biometrics. This has happened despite Aadhaar’s rulebook suggesting, nobody can be denied enrolment for such a reason.
It seems that the enrollment denial have happened because of poor and inadequate understanding of provisions of Aadhaar enrolment among people, enroling agencies and operators.
Asked to clarify the provisions for dealing with people with ‘poor and compromised’ biometrics the first thing that a senior official in Jharkhand office of Unique Identity Authority of India said was that nobody could be denied enrolment for poor biometrics. He then delved into the details.
He started with classifying the people with compromised biometrics into three categories. The first, people with poor biometric (worn-out finger ridges and poor iris) the second, people with ‘biometric exception’ (having no finger by virtue of injuries or by birth) and the third, people falling in the rarest of the rare cases (having neither any finger nor good iris).
He then clarified provisions dealing in all cases. “The people with worn-out finger ridges, therefore having poor biometric impressions, will be given four attempts to record their finger prints by pressing the biometric recording machine. The machines automatically records the best input,” this is how people with poor finger prints will be recorded.
On the people falling in the ‘biometric exceptions’ the official said that such people would be photographed with raised hands and this would serve the purpose, along with the details of irises of the person. However, if the enrolee has even a single finger in his/her hands (s) he will not be treated as person with biometric exception.
And in the third case —when people neither have any finger nor good iris — the person’s demographic record would be taken along with his/her close-up photograph. “This will serve the purpose,” said the official.
Thus, it is evident that no operator or agency entrusted with the job of Aadhaar enrolment can deny enrolment on the aforesaid ground. If any agency is found doing the same they would be punished. “In past we have barred IL & FS from doing enrolment in state for similar mistakes and in future also we won’t let erring agency get away with such mistakes,” said the official.
Thus next time one comes across instances of people being denied enrolment for whatever reasons one has to urge the enroling operator, to enrol giving reference of the existing rules.