Fingerprint and Aadhar Linkage Causing Distress to Elderly

The government’s insistence on fingerprint and Aadhar linkage means many senior citizens cannot access important services.

P.V. Manoranjan Rao, 81, a renowned space scientist who retired from ISRO in 1996, is suddenly facing the prospect of being locked out of his bank account because the bank’s biometric machine will not recognise his fingerprints and he cannot link his account to his Aadhar card. Rao is particularly keen to have this process completed as soon as possible because his 54-year-old son Chandrasekhar has 97 percent physical and mental disability and cannot move from his bed; the father wants to add his son’s name to his account so that Chandrasekhar’s care can continue after he, the father, is gone.

This situation has compelled Rao to petition the Supreme Court of India to allow senior citizens above the age of 75 to access Aadhar services without biometric authentication.

It is a well known fact that ageing results in decreased skin firmness, due to which the quality of fingerprints deteriorates (even though the prints remain the same) and it becomes harder for the biometric machines to recognise and match them.

The governmental insistence on fingerprint and Aadhar linkage is therefore becoming a huge cause of concern among the elderly.

Rao has petitioned the Supreme Court that seniors over the age of 75 only be required to produce self-certified copies of their Aadhar cards to access services. His petition is yet to be acknowledged by the apex court.

It is apparent that biometric deterioration is bound to cause a lot of hardship for elderly citizens in the country. Senior citizens are finding it increasingly difficult to access services like subsidised food under the government’s public distribution system, update their Aadhar cards in case of mistakes made in the originals, or port telephone numbers between one carrier and another.

Although the UIADI (Unique Identification Authority of India), which issues the Aadhar cards, acknowledges the problem, nothing has been done about it so far. In 2017, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan had announced that iris scans instead of fingerprints for linking mobile numbers to Aadhaar cards for senior citizens would soon be introduced. Last week the government again said that senior citizens would be able to access their pensions without having to give their fingerprints. However, these promises have yet to be implemented, confusion continues to prevail among bank and government officials in charge of schemes, and senior citizens continue to be harassed.