Ram Vilas Paswan orders probe into ‘Aadhaar death’

New Delhi: The consumer affairs ministry has ordered a probe into the death of a girl in Jharkhand whose family was allegedly refused grains due to non-linkage of Aadhaar with ration card.

The 11-year old girl in Jharkhand’s Simdega district apparently died due to startvation.

Union food and consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan said that a team, headed by food secretary Ravi Kant, has been sent to Jharkhand to probe the incident.

“We have also sought a report from the state government in the matter,” he said.

Reports from Jharkhand’s Simdega district said that the 11-year old girl’s family had been removed from the state’s public distribution system because their Aadhaar cards were not linked to the new list issued by the government.

While the girl’s family insists that she died because of lack of food many including local residents district officials insisted that she died due to malaria.

Even as the state government denied that the girl’s death had anything to do with starvation, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI), the nodal agency that issues Aadhaar numbers and maintains its database insisted that the Aadhaar Act made it clear that no one would be denied food rations if they did not possess an Aadhaar number.

The agency asked for action to be taken against the authorities as the girl had an Aadhaar card.

The UIDAI maintains the Aadhaar database, which contains the fingerprints and iris scans of 116 crore Indian residents.