HYDERABAD: As Aadhaar is mandatory for admission in government schools, children belonging to vulnerable communities who do not have Aadhar cards or any other documents are being deprived of their basic right to education.
According to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, no child between the age of 6 to 14 shall be denied admission to a school for lack of documents. However, Aadhaar is a mandatory column in the Telangana State Child Info Portal that maps information about the student. After entering the Aadhaar number of a student in the system, the portal provides information like the previous school attended and the class in which the child studied, on the basis of which the child is enrolled.
Speaking to TNIE, Puli Raju, a primary school teacher from Siddipet said that Aadhaar was made mandatory as a few children were caught having simultaneous admission in both private and government schools some years ago. It was done to obtain the benefits like free school uniforms being provided in the government school.
It also helps to track if the student has received books, uniforms, and mid-day meals, he added. “We enrol students in the first class even if they do not have Aadhaar. It becomes difficult to admit a student in second or classes above that as the name and history of the student does not appear in the system,” Raju added. Children who do not have Aadhaar even after class 5 are being sent back and their parents are asked to approach the nearest MeeSeva Kendra for Aadhaar card, he added.
“Knowing their birth date and having proper documents related to it is a luxury for a lot of children living in slums. Without supportive documents, no MeeSeva Kendra entertains their application for Aadhaar card,” said Hima Bindu, a child rights worker. The child info portal system also cannot provide information of migrated children who hold Aadhaar cards from different States, leaving them outside the sphere of education, she added.
In November 2022, the District Education Officer of Medchal issued a circular reiterating that the Aadhaar card is not mandatory for admission to schools and ordered all government schools to follow the rule. It also directed Mandal officers to coordinate with headmasters to get the Aadhaar number of the students after admission.The government of Telangana is providing a facility to enrol students in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) through Mandal Resource Centres, the circular says.
Under 12A of the Aadhaar (Enrolment and Update) Regulations, it shall be the responsibility of the schools to arrange to provide for Aadhaar enrolments and biometric updates of children who are not yet assigned an Aadhaar number. Schools should facilitate it by organising special camps.
‘In order to avoid hardship to children it is obligatory for State governments to arrange Aadhaar enrolment camps in all the schools,’ a circular issued by UIDAI in 2018 said, which highlights that the issue is prolonged for many years.
Akkeshwar Rao, District Education Officer of the two districts believes that the camps will surely reduce the intensity of issue as grade transition from preschool to the primary will happen smoothly only when children have enrollments made already.