Aadhaar reveals lakhs of 'ghost' children in India
- The government provides free lunch for students across the nation under the mid-day meal scheme.
- Earlier this month, the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry had taken a decision to make Aadhaar Card number mandatory to obtain free food in schools.
FollowAndhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Manipur have 4.4 lakh “ghost school students.” This shocking data has been revealed by none other than the Aadhaar Card number. As a result, the states struck off these students from schools, for whom the government was providing funds.
As we are all aware of the fact that the government provides free lunch for students across the nation under the mid-day meal scheme. Earlier this month, the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry had taken a decision to make Aadhaar Card number mandatory to obtain free food in schools.
Critics had questioned this move as according to them thousands of children will not be getting these free meals from the child nutrition scheme. But a data from the HRD ministry has revealed that a number of schools have non-existent students in their records and they keep on asking for extra funds from the mid-day meal scheme allocation.
“We are still in the process of collating data from states, but available figures show fake enrolment of students in government schools. The number of fake students may go up further once all the states share data,” an HRD official was quoted as saying by the Hindustan Times.
“We are yet to calculate the money saved through the elimination of fake beneficiaries,” an HRD ministry official added.
