If you have filled up your Aadhaar card form and are waiting for the authorities to call you for your biometric test, your wait would be a long one. The old forms have been declared null and void and you would have to now fill up a new form that would be available a few weeks later. 

Those who have already received their Aadhaar cards are secure but anyone who has only filled up the form would have to do the needful again. The forms were scrapped about two months ago but there is no public notice to inform as such. 

The Aadhaar enrolment process begins with a visit to an enrolment centre (Poura Bhavan). There the person has to fill up and submit an enrolment form. He is later informed of a date when he would have to return with proof of identity and address and get his demographic and biometric data recorded. A few weeks later the Aadhaar card would be sent to him.

The process is governed by the Unique Identification Authority of India, a central government body. 

But the process has been halted now since a loophole was found in the old forms. A single old form allowed multiple people to enter their details in them, provided they were of the same family. 

“But unscrupulous agents were getting hold of the forms. They would take money from people without proper documents and fill their names in the blank spaces in the form, as if they were family members of genuine residents,” said an officer at the census office in Janaganana Bhavan in IB Block. 

Such discrepancies were reported from all corners of the country and so the old forms have been scrapped. According to the official, at least two agents have been arrested for making Aadhar cards of people in this fashion in lieu of money — one in Salt Lake and another in the Baguiati-Lake Town area.

The new forms, set to make an appearance in about three weeks, would have separate forms for everyone. But the scrapping of the old forms has not been communicated to residents and many are being inconvenienced. 

“I had filled out the forms for my entire family and turned up at Poura Bhavan on the date they had given me. I even took my ailing mother only to be informed that it had been cancelled,” said Ankit Saraogi, a resident of CD Block.

A software engineer who has left the city after bagging a job in Bangalore said that he could not furnish his Aadhaar card or acknowledgement slip at his office despite having filled out the form several months ago. “There was no notice about the delay either,” said Pritam Mukherjee, a resident of ED Block.

Are you waiting to get your Aadhaar card?
Write to The Telegraph Salt Lake, 6 Prafulla Sarkar Street,
Calcutta 700001 or email to saltlake@abpmail.com