Check your Aadhaar, Telangana tops error charts

HYDERABAD: Telangana may have achieved 100% universal Aadhaar coverage along with a few other states, but India’s newest state has the highest error percentage in the country.
While Telangana has 13.6 % errors, Karnataka has 8.6% errors and the rest have less than 5.5% errors in Aadhaar cards issued in their respective states, according to the study by global social impact advisory group Dalberg.

Most of these errors are mistakes in dates of birth or names, followed by goof-up in names, addresses, the gender of the person and photographs, the report says.
Experts say the errors assume significance in the backdrop of the proposed implementation of the National Population Register (NPR), which will seek data on dates of birth and Aadhaar numbers of citizens. Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh has just 0.80% errors in Aadhaar cards issued in the state.
The pilot project of Aadhaar enrolment was first kicked off in 2010 in the then undivided Andhra Pradesh.
“The transliteration tool which converts Telugu into English and vice-versa was not updated. Officials used a customized tool which has resulted in errors in names and addresses of people,” cybersecurity expert Sridhar Nallamothu explained. “The cameras that were used were of outdated VGA (video graphics array) type which was part of first-generation smart mobile phones released in 2002. Similar phones were used during 2010 pilot project,” he added.
Experts also blamed operators belonging to private enrolment agencies hired by the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) for mistakes. “After opening the network with their finger authentication, the operators allowed others who are not authenticated to carry out the enrolment work,” said a senior official, who did not wish to be identified. “UIDAI had even cancelled contracts of some of these enrolment agencies,” he recalled.
Another glaring error that often came to the fore was mobile phone numbers not displayed on Aadhaar cards. “It was either due to the cardholder forgetting to give his or her mobile number to the operator or the number not being filled in the designated column by the operator,” experts said.
Officials countered that care was taken as monitors were arranged for the benefit of citizens to see what is being entered in the system by the operators. “There may be some technical errors. But generally, illiterate people would not know what was being shown on the monitors and might have nodded to what was being asked of them by the operators,” said a UIDAI official.