Supreme Court To Hear PIL On Starvation Deaths Due To Lack Of Aadhaar

Supreme Court will hear a PIL on people who starved to death after being denied ration for not linking Aadhaar to PDS. The PIL cites 30 documented deaths from states including Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, News18 reported.

The apex court is hearing a slew of petitions challenging mandatory linking of Aadhaar to avail of various services, and the next date of hearing is May 3. Earlier on February 22, former Karnataka High Court judge Justice K S Puttaswamy had told the apex court that several deaths had reportedly taken place due to starvation on account of glitches in the Aadhaar-based public distribution system and the court must consider granting them compensation.

He had urged the bench to consider granting compensation to those who had suffered on the ground of exclusion due to Aadhaar, particularly the kin of the starvation death victims. A Scroll article also reported on three Dalit brothers who died of starvation in Gokarna town near Karnataka after the family was denied rations for six months because they did not have an Aadhaar card.

Because of glitches in the Aadhaar-based Public Distribution System, a 30-year-old woman from Dhawadangal village in Pakur district in Jharkhand died. She had been denied rations because the machine which autheticates her Aadhaar identity – Aadhaar-enabled point-of-sale machine -- failed to authenticate her biometrics, Scroll reported. She was below the poverty line.

Activists in Jharkhand told Scroll that there were seven such starvation deaths which took place in village of Jharkhand. Supreme Court has made exceptions for leprosy patients, manual labourers and other categories of people who are unable to provide biometrics because of illness or disability that can limit them from providing proofs which Aadhaar requires.