Aadhaar cards carrying photographs of non-human beings
8 Apr, 2013The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that thousands of unique identity cards (Aadhaar) contain photographs of tree, animals, building, etc. against the name of the card holders.
The reply, provided by Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), stated that nearly 3,858 Aadhaar cards have so far been detected which have a non-human photograph on them. However, the reply cited the error in printing software as the cause of this mishap. The software started malfunctioning in a specified period due to incorrect algorithm and picked up random pictures stored in the computer instead of from desired source files.
After the problem was detected, the UIDAI initiated a process to identify photograph mismatches in Aadhaar letters and detected 19,493 such cases. Of these, around 15,000 letters had human photograph but not of the required person.
Aadhaar is India's Universal biometric identification program (based on ten finger prints and eye scan) that seeks to provide a unique identity to all 1.2 billion residents. However, the letter would lose its validity if the photograph on the letter is not of the person whose address is mentioned.