Aadhaar exposes ‘ghost students’
OUT IN THE OPEN Data reveals how govt schools showed enrolment of nonexistent students to claim money for midday meal
NEW DELHI: Aadhaar, the 12-digit unique identification number, has helped states strike off 4.4 lakh ‘ghost students’ from schools in Jharkhand, Manipur and Andhra Pradesh for whom the government was providing money under the mid-day meal scheme.
The human resource development (HRD) ministry this month made Aadhaar mandatory for mid-day meal. The move evoked a strong reaction from activists, who claim it will exclude students from the nutrition scheme in which the government provides free lunch to students from class one to eight on working days.
Data for 2015-16 and 2016-17 shared by the three states with the HRD ministry has revealed how government schools were showing enrolment of non-existent students and claiming money for mid-day meal.
For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, where all 29 lakh students enrolled in government schools have been linked to Aadhaar, it was found that 2.1 lakh children, whose enrolment was shown in the school records earlier, did not exist. The enrolment of these children has since been cancelled, said a government official.
“We are still in the process of collating data from states but available figures show that many government schools have shown fake enrolment. After Aadhaar authentication was done, the enrolment reduced. The number of fake students can go up further once all states share data,” said an HRD ministry official.
In Jharkhand, enrolment of 2.2 lakh non-existent students has been deleted from school records. So far, 89% of the total 48 lakh students enrolled in government schools have got Aadhaar. Another 1,500 students have been removed from rolls in Manipur after they were found to be fake.
The funding for mid-day meal scheme is shared by Centre and states in a 60:40 ratio, except for the north-eastern states, where the ratio is 90:10. Of the total enrolment of 13.16 crore children, 10.03 crore children availed midday meal on an average in 11.50 lakh schools during 2015-16.
Not only ghost students, a pilot study done by the Kerala government’s department of general education in 2014 found 3,892 excess teacher posts in schools after Aadhaar number was integrated with the student database.
“Due to this exercise, no new teacher’s posts have been sanctioned in the state for the last two years. Notional savings achieved due to this exercise are estimated to be ₹540 crore per annum,” said a government source.
ABP Pandey, CEO of Unique Identification Authority of India, said: “Like it helped weed out bogus PDS and LPG beneficiaries, having the 12-digit number will ensure benefits meant for an individual student go to him. Money that was earlier siphoned away by giving false enrolment figures will be checked.”