Driving 30km to an Aadhaar centre, skipping work and school to make minor changes — chaos is the order of the day as people rush to get their Aadhaar cards linked with their PAN. This can be done online, but the websites are rife with technical glitches and Bangalore One centres aren’t equipped to handle the rush. Why is Aadhaar, which should serve merely as identity proof being linked with basic services like rations, gas subsidies, bank accounts and even phone numbers, asks Ranjani Madhavan
The deadlines may have been extended but panic has set in. Although people have been given time until August 5 to file their IT returns and until August 31 to link their PAN cards to Aadhaar, many are hurrying to the Bangalore One and other centres to either make an Aadhaar card or correct existing ones to make sure new deadlines are met.
Despite the facility to e-link PAN and Aadhaar on the I-T department's website, technical glitches are driving many to centres set up instead, where long queues and server problems are driving people up the wall.
“I tried linking my PAN with Aadhaar online but it kept saying ‘session expired’. I made multiple attempts and although I filled the details quickly I kept losing the session,” complained Vishnu, a corporate professional.
Several are having to take a day off from work to queue up at Aadhaar centres, but come away disappointed with their work still not done. “This is the tenth time that I have visited a centre. I have been to other places in Malleswaram, Rajajinagar and Yeshwanthpur to get my Aadhaar card made, but the queues began at 7 am to centres that open at 10 am,” complained Venkat Subramanya, who was at a Bangalore One Centre in Malleswaram on Tuesday afternoon.
“This is the worst experience I have had. The government should have handed the job to a private agency. The first nine times I tried, the servers were not working and I was not even offered a token,” he recalled, adding,” There are only a few authorised centres and one of the centres I had gone to earlier, closed down after its license was cancelled.”
For Subramanya making an Aadhar card is essential if he wishes to withdraw his provident fund. He has begun receiving messages to link his SIM card to it as well.
At the Rajajinagar Aadhaar centre, Asha, her husband and two children took a day’s leave to correct their address in their Aadhaar cards. “We got the token 15 days ago and were asked to come here today. We need to change the address but went through the same biometric, picture and eye scan procedure. We all took a holiday to do this. What else could we do?” asked Ms Asha frustratedly.
For the differently-abled the rush and mayhem is even harder to deal with. Retired army official, Bhole Satyendranath, 75, who is partially paralysed, was not able to walk or even lift his hand to make a biometric thumb impression and had to be helped by two of his family members, who escorted him to one centre, just to correct the name on his Aadhaar card.
(Photo: R. Samuel)
“My name is Bhole Satyendranath Rao on my passport and PAN card but on my Aadhaar card it is Bhole Satyendra. I came down shere to correct it. I will then have to go to the passport office to renew my passport with the corrected Aadhaar card,” Rao explained. His family has been driving around to find a centre on the ground floor so that he can walk in easier.
His relative, Samitha (name changed), said, “We have driven 30 kms to come here. We stay in Yelahanka and the one centre that we had approached earlier, shut down as its license was cancelled. All the other centres were not easy to get to as they were on the first floor. Why can’t there be separate counters for senior citizens and the disabled? Why can’t their names be corrected online ? How do they expect the old or physically challenged people to do this? Not everyone has a wheelchair!”
Mr Rao’s other companion, Sitaram Nayak, explained he had sent an application to the department concerned asking for the name change and also tried to do it online but nothing had worked. “So we had to bring him here. Getting his passport depends on this,” he added.
Get your act together, Bangalore-One!
With confusion and delays dogging their attempts to make Aadhaar cards or correct them, many now believe the government has set unreasonable deadlines for linking of PAN to Aadhaar and filing of income tax returns, especially as its services are not proving efficient enough for the task.
Besides software problems at centres and on the websites, private agencies involved have been over-charging people, forcing the government to cancel their licences. But in the process, the shortage of centres has created a rush at the existing ones with government departments doing little to compensate for their absence.
“The day that the Aadhaar-PAN link was made mandatory thousands rushed to the centres. They came as early as 5 am although we open at 9 am. People thought if they came early enough their work would be done. But some who arrived early stood for a whole day in the queue and still did not get a chance to get their work done and returned home dejected. So to counter this centres introduced the advance token system. We issue advance tokens twice a week. Some centres may give tokens every day. The change was made so people didn’t have to stand in the line forever. At some centres people started shouting and protesting when they did not get their turn,” said a supervisor of an Aadhaar centre, Yellappa.
60% the crowd is there to get the PAN linked to Aadhaar despite the e-link facility and 40 per cent is there to make corrections in their names, mobile numbers and addresses, according to him.
Manager of a Bangalore One centre in Rajajinagar, Y N Murthy explains that some of the confusion is due to the different software that was used when Aadhaar was first introduced a few years ago. “Though people would feed in their birth date the card only showed the birth year. This has created quite a bit of confusion for Aadhaar card-holders. Also, every time people change their address, shift cities or lose/change their mobile numbers, they need to visit the centres and update these details as everything is now being linked to Aadhaar,” he pointed out .
“Earlier the department offered the facility to make changes in Aadhaar at people’s doorsteps. Private contractors especially offered this facility to senior citizens. But then they began asking for bribes and got caught. Now everyone has to come to the centres for anything they want,” he added.
With the queues only growing longer and the process becoming more difficult than ever, many are loudly complaining about the PAN-Aadhaar link for filing of income tax returns , which is costing them in more ways than one for no fault of theirs.
Guest column: Unorganised sector hit the hardest, says Hari Govind, CPI Secretary
When Aadhaar was introduced it was for a completely different purpose. It was useful as it helped obtain subsidies and scholarships for people who were in need of it. Now it has turned into an essential card to get just about anything done, including airline ticket booking and train reservations .
What purpose does this really serve? It is creating more trouble than good. Many people have only PAN and not Aadhaar and some don’t have either. How will they link them in such situations? Most of the unorganised sector, consisting of industrial, construction labourers and domestic workers, have no form of identification. If these people are asked to produce the Aadhaar for gas subsidies or other consumer services, they won’t be able to. Often centers accept any date of birth that is told to them without verification as many people are unable to produce sufficient documents as proof. The process is therefore not completely foolproof as there have been cases of false age, date of birth and so on being submitted to the centres. To steer this initiative the government should have made the process smoother. The sudden announcement of mandatory linking of Aadhaar with PAN has caught people off guard.
The government has barely given enough time to people to do this and done little to inform them. It should have given a longer time for the linking of the two and organised campaigns to educate people about it. Once people are aware they will automatically do the needful without confusion.
Also, as the government is using technology it must make an online provision for those who wish to change their address, mobile numbers and other details. Just like we use one debit card at any ATM, the Aadhaar card updates and modifications must be allowed from multiple points. People should be able to update it on their own instead of having to go down to the centres, which is not always possible for everyone, especially senior citizens. There must be one master card for all transactions, which was actually one of the highlights of Aadhaar. At the same time any errors like mismatch of spellings between, say, PAN and Aadhaar must be verified by the departments themselves. The solution to all these bureaucratic problems is to limit its usage. As an ID proof, Aadhaar is just fine. It can represent one’s citizenship, name, age, date of birth and maybe even profession. It, however, cannot be used as an address proof because people are bound to keep changing homes and phone numbers. To use it in every sphere of life is unnecessary and not beneficial. A person’s wallet today consists of an employee card, PAN card, Voter ID, other passes and the Aadhaar card is only one more addition. We carry them all as we don’t know what we may be asked for at any given time. This must not be the case.
