Hundreds of Aadhaar cards found dumped in well in Maharashtra

New Delhi: Volunteers in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal city have found hundreds of Aadhaar cards dumped in a well in the district while they were cleaning it.

The volunteers were carrying out work of desilting the well when they found some plastic bags inside it. To their surprise, they found hundreds of original Aadhaar cards on opening the bags.

Many of them were found in damaged condition, but around 157 were partially damaged. The unique identification number of these cards were intact.

The recovered cards were issued between 2011 and 2014 by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

The district administration has ordered a probe into the matter, and an FIR has also been lodged against officials of the postal department.

It may be recalled that the Supreme Court on Tuesday extended indefinitely its March 31 deadline for linking bank accounts and mobile phone numbers with Aadhaar.

It, however, said the government may continue to seek the 12-digit national biometric identifier number of beneficiaries for transfer of benefits of schemes funded from the consolidated fund of India.

The constitution bench was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar and its enabling Act.

On March 6, the attorney general had indicated to the bench that the Centre was willing to extend the March 31 deadline in view of the likelihood of the hearing getting prolonged.

On December 15 last year, the apex court had extended till March 31 the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with various services and welfare schemes.

With Agency Inputs