Our Correspondent Mar 01, 2018 00:00 IST
Jamshedpur: Updating details in Aadhaar card is now a nightmare for Jamshedpureans, thanks to frequent link failures at seven post offices that offer the service.
The Aadhaar update service started three months ago to enable people to rectify mistakes in Aadhaar cards issued to them, such as change in spellings, address, date of birth, among others.
But, for the past 15 days at least, technical glitches have made updates a slow and tedious process at Bistupur Main Post Office and six other sub-centres Kadma, Tatanagar (Golpahari), Sakchi, Sonari, Mango and Telco.
Post office officials plead helplessness. "May be the load on the UIDAI central server (in Bangalore) is too much. It takes immense time to open one page," said a senior official at Bistupur post office.
At post offices, people in stand in queues for hours, sometimes from 5am so that they can ensure their Aadhaar details are updated on the same day. Most return disappointed.
At Bistupur Main Post Office, where most people come after trying in vain at sub-centres, there are over 150 fresh applications each day but only 15 to 20 updates are successful. Numbers keep piling up.
On Tuesday, Bistupur homemaker Hetal Dave said she stood in queue from 7.30am to 5pm for her Aadhaar update. On Wednesday, 75-year-old Kadma resident Sudhir Kumar Mishra, in the same queue, said it was his second day. "On Tuesday, I came to the post office at 9am and stood till 5pm," Mishra, who before that tried unsuccessfully to update Aadhaar in Kadma, said. "Let's see what happens today (Wednesday)."
Chief postmaster-general of Jharkhand, Shashi Shalini Kujur, here in the city to inaugurate Daak Mahotsav at Tulsi Bhavan in Bistupur on Wednesday, admitted to snags.
"Technically, it is not possible to handle more than 30 applications per day per post office," she said. "What we may do is implement a token system for better queue management. We can also put up a list of post offices that offer the Aadhaar update services as many people don't know options and the load falls on a single post office," she said.
This apart, she said Sakchi and Bistupur railway ticket booking systems would be shifted to respective post offices. After manpower training, ticket bookings are likely to start in April at post offices.