VIJAYAWADA: A whopping 6,20,554 fake identities have been removed from school registers after an Aadhaar authentication process of students availing midday meals in the state in 2015-16 and 2016-17.
According to a note submitted to the NITI Aayog by the Primary Education Department, savings on account of the deletion of names was Rs 105 crore in 2016-17, during which time 2.15 lakh names were removed from the rolls. The remaining were detected in 2015-16, but it is not clear how much the savings was in the period.
Assistant director Primary Education T Vijaya Kumar said, “We started the process of Aadhaar authentication in 2015-16. We got 70 per cent of the work done in the period and in the last academic year, we completed 100 per cent. Impressed with our work, the NITI Aayog asked all other states to follow our model in February this year.”
According to him, during the authentication process the officials came to know that there were two types of fake profiles — of those who moved to other schools without their names being deleted, creating a duplication of accounts and then names that had been registered without any student being enrolled. This has been done in schools where the enrolment is poor. It was found that several headmasters had fed fake names to the rolls when biometric attendance data was checked.
This was done either to prevent the schools from being shut down or to misappropriate resources that would be sanctioned for the midday meal scheme.As against the total number of 33,93,411 students enrolled in 2016-17, 2,15,000 profiles were found to be fake. After the deletion of their names, the strength of students in all 45,985 schools came down to 31,78,411.Of the 31,78,411 students, 26,95,133 students availed midday meals. The total budget was Rs 483.78 crore of which the Centre’s share was Rs 273.02 crore and the remaining was the state’s. This saved the Centre Rs 25.81 crore and the state Rs 79.62 crore (a total Rs 105 crore), the Primary Education Department said in a note submitted to the NITI Aayog.
Officials said that School Information and Management System (SIMS) coupled with the District Information System for Education (U-DISE) had enabled the detection of the fake identities.
“The verification process for the ongoing academic session (2017-18) is going on and we are already seeing the benefit. Till now, Rs 6.75 crore of the Central budget has been saved,” the official said.
The total budget for the academic year is Rs 564,42 crore of which the central share is Rs 266.27 crore and state’s Rs 298.14 crore.
Figures for 2016-17
Total enrolment: 31,53,168
Midday meals availed 28,01,429
Budget releases in crores
Centre: 298.83
State: 290.38
Total: 589.21
Savings
Centre: 25.81
State: 79.62
Total: 105.43
Total number of schools: 45,985
Total strength: 36,87,389
Student organisations too are happy over the detection of fake names since the development will help midday meals reach genuine students besides saving the cash-strapped government some money. “This type of authentication should be done in government-run hostels too to check wastage and corruption,” SFI state president Sk Mohammad said.