New Delhi, Feb. 21: Infants in orphanages will be given Aadhaar cards to check illegal adoptions and help the government monitor the children, prone to abuse at the shelters or to delinquency later.

These cards, which will be linked to the Aadhaar numbers of the orphanage superintendents, will also give the children a chance to trace their roots in future.

'The idea is to give the child an identity,' said Deepak Sandhu, chairperson of the Child Adoption Resource Agency (Cara), the nodal government body that facilitates adoptions by mediating between orphanages and interested couples.

She said the cards would also allow the children to 'open their own bank accounts without trouble at a later stage' and secure welfare in an era of direct cash transfers.

'Besides, since their biometric details will remain in the records, the children can be traced and even supervised, if necessary,' Sandhu added.

Very few children have been issued with Aadhaar cards till now because their biometrics, especially those of kids under five, keep changing a lot.

Under the Unique Identification Authority of India's rules, a child aged above one year can apply for a temporary card, which eschews the child's biometric data and instead refers to the Aadhaar cards of its parents or guardians.

After the child turns five, its biometric data are collected and linked to its Aadhaar card. At 15 years, the biometric data are taken afresh and a permanent Aadhaar card is issued.

Two pairs of female twins at Punjab's Panjola village, aged 10 months and about one year respectively, became India's youngest Aadhaar card holders in May 2013 as part of a special government drive.

This was done to promote the Dhanalakshmi scheme, which aids girls' education, in Fatehgarh Sahib, the district with the worst child sex ratio in the country. The cards will allow the twins to secure the cash transfers when they start going to school.

Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi yesterday accused adoption homes (orphanages) of falsely claiming they didn't have adoptable children.

Orphanages may do so out of lethargy --- so they can avoid the cumbersome adoption process --- or to 'sell' the children into illegal adoption.

Maneka slammed the agencies for 'lying' and 'cheating' and said the worst performing among them would be shut down immediately.

'I'm appalled by all of you,' the minister told orphanage representatives from across the nation at a meeting here. 'I've found bottlenecks, idleness, unconcern, deliberate lying.... In the process you have destroyed thousands of lives.'

She said that many couples were opting for illegal adoption because the legal agencies 'trouble them a lot'.

An effort began last year to enrol India's street children too in the Aadhaar programme to allow them, in principle, to obtain school admission, open bank accounts and secure government welfare.

Most street children live with their parents --- mostly migrant labourers staying in makeshift roadside or construction site camps. But some have no guardians and live on railway platforms or near tracks.

For the latter group, NGOs and government child welfare committees are being drafted so they can 'introduce' the children for Aadhaar enrolment and, if necessary, obtain affidavits from gazetted officers that will serve as address and identity proof.