Noida, Ghaziabad among bottom 5 in UP to verify Aadhaar for education subsidy

NOIDA: As more than 18,000 students in govt primary schools in the city and Ghaziabad wait for the Rs 1,200 subsidy, transferred directly to bank accounts, for the previous academic session, a recent Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) report shows the two cities are heaped at the bottom of the list among UP's 75 districts in students' Aadhaar card verification.
While Ghaziabad ranked second last with 9,888 pending Aadhaar card verifications for govt primary students for the 2023-2024 academic session, Noida was placed at 72nd position with 11,623 pending verifications.
Ghaziabad is ranked below Noida because the percentage of pending applications is higher, officials said.
According to official data, 14,000 students were deprived of DBT in Ghaziabad in the last academic session, while 4,000 did not receive it in GB Nagar. Officials attribute the gap to portal malfunctions and a lack of awareness among parents. Of 74,780 total enrollments in Ghaziabad, 46,657 have been verified, 7,417 failed verification, 9,888 are pending, and 10,818 Aadhaar cards have not been provided.
In Noida, 7,479 Aadhaar cards failed verification out of 69,906 enrolments.
District coordinators for UDISE portal stated that the large number of unverified Aadhaars is mainly due to teachers' reluctance at the school level. "The schools are responsible for feeding the Aadhaar card details of each student in the portal. However, some schools admit students in advance and fill up the details throughout the academic session. Most of the pending cases in Noida are from private schools," said Sanjeev Pathak, district coordinator in Noida.
UDISE portal provides a unique identity code generated for each school that helps maintain a record from central to the block level. For students, after uploading all documents on the portal, a permanent education number (PEN) is generated, which is a unique identification number assigned to every student provided by the ministry of education through the UDISE portal.
"Each teacher has to upload Aadhaar data on the portal. They did not do their duty on time. We have asked all teachers to complete the process as soon as possible. Some teachers claimed there were technical glitches on the portal, which has been sorted now. Moreover, lack of awareness among parents regarding the Aadhaar card process has led to the huge number of pending verifications," said Ruchi Tyagi, district coordinator of Ghaziabad.
In Uttar Pradesh, out of 1.4 crore total enrollment, 10 lakh Aadhaar cards of students are yet to be verified. At 39.7%, Ballia has the maximum pendency in the state. Bijnor has the minimum pendency at 13%.