Authorities in Karnataka state, India, are looking to use the country’s Aadhaar cards to ensure that parents do not enroll children in schools outside of their municipal districts.
Indian children are currently entitled to free education under the country’s Right to Education (RTE) Act, but they must accept seats in the municipal wards of their primary address; however, many parents have signed up their children for seats in what they perceive to be better schools using fake addresses. Now, state authorities will start using Aadhaar and voter ID cards as the sole documents of student registration.
That’s very much in keeping with the overall spirit of the Aadhaar program, which was implemented to cut down on fraud and improve government administration. The cards link citizens to a national biometric registry, ensuring that the identities on the ID cards themselves are indeed matched to the correct individuals; and they have been used to track government employees’ working hours and to administrate healthcare services, among other important functions.
The use of Aadhaar authentication could make a big difference in its school registration application. Authorities reportedly found at least 10,000 fraudulent RTE applications last year, with the majority of parents seeking school assignments Bengaluru for their children, overwhelming that district’s resources. Hopefully Aadhaar authentication will allow for a better-managed school system for all concerned.
Source: The Economic Times
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January 18, 2016 – by Alex Perala
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