Though no government order stipulates that the mentally ill should have an Aadhaar card, efforts by the Government Mental Health Centre, Kuthiravattom, to enrol the inmates fetched an unexpected bonanza: identities of 32 patients whose names and addresses had remained unknown, became accessible.
For these 32, Aadhaar came as a life-saver as the hospital finally got the means to locate their kin, using the information about their address that the patients were unable to provide. “We are elated. This is an unexpected benefit from Aadhaar,” said Superintendent of the Mental Health Centre, N. Rajendran.
It was the District Legal Services Authority that took the initiative to get Aadhaar for the inmates. It took a whole day for 12 Akshaya service providers (enrolment centres) to visit each ward and collect the biometric information of 264 patients. As most were unidentified at admission, they were enrolled in Aadhaar under the name that the hospital had assigned them, and their address was “C/o Superintendent of the hospital.” To the surprise of the service providers, the data of 32 inmates were rejected by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) system due to duplication. It turned out that the biometric details matched already existing Aadhaar records. The service providers knew then that they had struck gold. At Mr. Rajendran’s request, they contacted the UIDAI authorities to get the details that were already recorded.
“Usually, the UID data is never shared as it would violate a person’s privacy,” said IT Mission Kozhikode District Coordinator Subini S. Nair. “But this was a special case, and we could convince them. That this is a government hospital also helped.”
“The details include the addresses in which those 32 Aadhaar cards were made. Some even have a telephone number. This data would be of great use to the hospital authorities who have been working hard to find the relatives,” Ms. Nair said.
