In a heart wrenching incident, an 11 year old girl from Simdega district in Jharkhand died due to starvation. The girl and her family had not eaten any food for nearly eight days and on the eighth day, the girl begged for rice as she gasped her last breath.
The family was unable to buy food from the rations store as their ration card was canceled for not linking the Aadhaar card. The daughter Santoshi Kumari had Durga Pooja holidays, depriving her of the midday meal she received at school.
In February, the Central Government sent out an order making the Aadhaar card compulsory for accessing subsidised food grains with the Public Distribution System.
Activists from the village raised this issue and sent out a written complaint on 1st September to the district supply officer. The complaint had an Aadhaar card photocopy of Santhoshi’s mother, Koyli Devi. The complaint was made as a request for a new ration card.
The ration card arrived at Koyli’s home two weeks after the death of her daughter. Officials have blamed the online portal stating it was not working during that time.
At a press conference on 7th September, State Secretary of Food and Civic Supply, Vinay Chaubey proudly stated that Jharkhand had achieved a 100% Aadhaar linking with the rations cards. He further added that 11.6 lakh people had their ration cards canceled for being fake or duplicate.
At present, 2.3 crores people in Jharkhand are covered under the Public Distribution System that provides subsidized prices for ration. The government records clearly state only 1.7 crores have managed to link their Aadhaar cards.
The imposition of Aadhaar card is in violation of a number of Supreme Court orders. Thousands of families in the country are being deprived of food due to the necessity of linking Aadhaar to their ration cards.
