TS says Aadhaar card not compulsory to appear for SSC examination

Hyderabad, Dec 1: Telangana state education department is believed to have announced that it has issued a notification cancelling the previous rule that made it mandatory for SSC students to acquire Aadhaar card for appearing for their annual examinations. Giving a major relief to students, parents and school managements, the department said that it is no longer mandatory to acuire an Aadhaar card for writing the SSC examination. Stating that it earlier acted on the directions of the central government, Telangana's education department said in its notification, "The Government of India's Ministry of Communication and IT, Department of Electronics and IT had sought Aadhaar details of all children in the age group of 5 to 17 years." Following this, the Department of School Education had set up at least 10 UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) centers in each district, exclusively for students. It may be recalled that on November 28, the State Education Department had announced that it was mandatory for students to have Aadhaar card for the SSC examination. The department, therefore, asked the school managements to prepare a list of the names of the students along with their Aadhaar card numbers and submit the same before December 2. This put the school managements under inconvenient situation. Almost six lakh students were to appear for the exams. Of which, 1.5 lakh students didn't have Aadhaar card numbers.