Madhya Pradesh, May 04, 2016: Young Rakhi was not even an hour old when she got her Aadhaar number. Within 22 minutes of her birth - at a local health centre in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua- she was registered. The card will reach the family within a week.
Last year, the UIDAI (the unique identification authority of India) had relaxed its rules to bring children aged under five years under its ambit.
Earlier children were not registered for Aadhaar "because up to age of 5 years kid’s biometric data like fingerprints keep changing," says the UIADI website.
But after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s directive that children can be tracked from birth, the rules were changed.
Under the new rules, children were allowed to have Aadhaar registration even if they had no name. Their biometric details were to be captured after the age of 6 years.
The UIADI website says, "If an Aadhaar Card of a child below the age of 5 years is created, it will be linked to the parents Aadhaar Card."