Government’s desperate efforts to link aadhaar with notable schemes and services have finally started to show results. In a big development recently, the linking of aadhaar with mid-day meal program has identified over 272,000 fake students. MHRD had asked the schools and concerned departments to enrol aadhaar based authentication in mid-day meal programs across schools and the announcement was made in February 2017.
MHRD had asked the schools and concerned departments to enrol aadhaar based authentication in mid-day meal programs across schools and the announcement was made in February this year. This was done in order to create a monitoring system for the students so that the disparency could be identified and addressed accordingly. Three states, including Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur have identified over 272,000 students and their names have been deleted.
According to the data available with the ministry of human resource development, Andhra Pradesh had the maximum number of fake students with the number going over 2,15,000. Arunachal Pradesh had 42,414 fake students whereas, Manipur identified 14,000 fake students after aadhaar based authentication was implemented.
According to an official from MHRD, who requested not to be named, there will be more such cases as and when the implementation reaches more areas. The official stated that though it might reduce the number of students enrolled in schools, it will save a lot of costs on mid-day meals.
In over 15 lakh schools, there are over 10 crore students who are getting benefitted from mid-day meal scheme. mid-day meal scheme has generated over 23 lakh employment opportunities. In 2017-18, the central government has allocated Rs 10,000 crore for this scheme.