After Aadhaar authentication, state suspect thousands of students may be fake

A student can avail several government benefits, including scholarships with an Aadhaar card. The authentication of 93% of the students has been completed in the state while the remaining has to be completed by September end

Mumbai: In order to weed out bogus students availing government benefits such as mid-day meals among other schemes, the state government recently conducted an Aadhaar authentication process of the students enrolled in private, government and aided schools. After the verification process the state suspects that thousands of students may turn out to be fake.

After Aadhaar authentication, state suspect thousands of students may be fake

A student can avail several government benefits, including scholarships with an Aadhaar card. The authentication of 93% of the students has been completed in the state while the remaining has to be completed by September end.

“The authentication process of around 4% of the students has failed due to various reasons. We have asked the management of the respective schools and officials from the department to re-check the details of the students whose authentication has failed. Though the failure in a few cases is expected to be due to technical issues such as mismatch of names, errors in the details, there are possibilities of fake students enrolled by a few schools,” said Ranjit Singh Deol, principal secretary, school education department.

With an aim to streamline the data of 22.5 million students, the state government undertook the drive to authenticate the Aadhar information of the students enrolled in private, government and aided schools.

The department is of the opinion that some of these students do not exist. “Fake students were found to be enrolled in aided schools for the government funding in a drive a few years ago. A large number of the failed authentication is expected to be of the bogus students. The main object of the authentication is to weed out such students. This means the number of such students may be in thousands rather than lakhs,” an official from the department said.

Apart from it, the department undertook the drive for the comprehensive data of the students for the implementation of the schemes and drive, finalisation of the pupil-teacher ratio, and effective implementation of the direct benefit transfer to the students.

The state government has been taking help from UIDAI (unique identification authority of India) for authentication. “The authentication has not been done through SMS in routine practice, but the authentication of the students is being done by UIDAI. The OTP authentication is not possible for students for various reasons, including the non-availability of mobile numbers,” the officer said.