Aadhaar centre helps 14 people reunite with family

Nagpur: A simple application for Aadhaar card in Maharashtra changed the lives of 14 people, who were reported missing by their families in various parts of the country years ago. The Aadhaar Seva Kendra (ASK) in Mankapur has been instrumental in reuniting persons with disabilities, women, and others, with their families scattered across the country in the past year. The centre’s manager Honorary Captain Anil Marathe identified cases in which applications would get rejected because of issues with biometrics during the registration process. It all started last year with the application of an 18-year-old mentally challenged man, whose school needed his Aadhaar card details. However, his application would get rejected each time due to issues with biometrics, Marathe said.

Marathe has been making a special effort, with the help of the UIDAI technical centre in Bengaluru and the regional office in Mumbai, to get Aadhaar details of persons reported missing based on their biometric data. The boy was found at a railway station when he was eight years old and was looked after by an orphanage and later by one Samarth Damle, who got him admitted to a school, he said. When the boy’s application got rejected repeatedly, Damle approached the centre in Mankapur and found that his Aadhaar registration had already been done in 2011, before he was reported missing. “Investigations revealed that the boy, Mohammed Aamir, had gone missing from his home in Jabalpur. Using his Aadhaar details, we were able to reunite him with his family,” Marathe said. Similarly, a 21-year-old man with disabilities, who was reported missing six years ago, was reunited with his family in Bihar. The boy was placed in an orphanage. An inquiry revealed that he already had an Aadhaar, generated in 2016. He was then identified as Sochan Kumar, based on his thumb print, eventually reunited with his family in Bihar’s Khagariya district after completing the legal procedures on August 19, Marathe said.