Santosh Kumari, an eleven year old girl died due to the starvation as her family didn’t get the ration from the depot because the Aadhaar number was not linked with the ration card.

According to the Right to Food Campaign activist, the girl was the resident of Jharkhand’s Simdega district. Even she didn’t get the mid day meals due to the Durga Puja holidays. She didn’t get food for eight days and finally lost her life.

The victim’s family was dependent on the subsidized ration as the family members belong to the poor strata of the society.

The local ration dealer had refused to give Santoshi’s family their rations for the past six months on the grounds that their ration card had not been linked – or “seeded”, as it’s known in official language – to their Aadhaar number.

According to activists, this is in clear violation of several Supreme Court orders issued since 2013, which state that possession of an Aadhaar number cannot be made compulsory to avail of benefits under government welfare schemes, particularly to buy subsidized food grains.

Despite this, Jharkhand continues to impose Aadhaar on citizens even more stringently.

In Simdega district, the ration shop dealer who sold subsidized food grains to Santoshi Kumari’s family also dealt with at least 700 households in and around Karimati village. Of them, 10 families had been deleted from the public distribution system list because they were not linked to their Aadhaar numbers.

According to the media reports, activists from the village had raised this issue of cancelled ration cards at a janta darbar or public hearing organised by the district collector on August 21. After this, on September 1, a written complaint was sent to the district supply officer along with a photocopy of the Aadhaar card of Koyli Devi, Santoshi’s mother. The complaint included a request to get a new ration card made.

However, the new ration card was not made for the rest of the month, and eventually arrived two weeks after Santoshi’s death.

The imposition of Aadhaar in violation of Supreme Court orders has had fatal consequences for 11-year-old Santoshi Kumari of Karimati village. It’s really disgusting that the authorities have not been obeying the orders of the Apex Court which stated that the Aadhar is not mandatory.

It’s the responsibility of the state government to ensure the rights of the poor people who are dependent on the subsidized food.