Affected villagers will be provided with fresh Aadhaar cards with correct dates of birth soon.
When their Aadhaar cards arrived, about 1,000 excited villagers in Kanjasa were left both amused and irritated. The cards issued to them mentioned their date of birth to be January 1, for all of them. A technical goof up led to every fifth person in Kanjasa, about 50 kilometres from Allahabad, having January 1 as their official date of birth.
Flooded with complaints, the authorities have ordered a probe and are trying to take remedial measures. "Nearly 1,000 (of the 5,000) residents have complained about faulty entries of their date of birth. The odd thing is that the date printed on all these cards is identical - January 1 - with variations in the years of birth," Neeraj Dubey, Block Development Officer (BDO), Jasra, under which the village falls, told PTI.
He said an inquiry has been ordered into how an error of "such a huge proportion" occurred. Mr Dubey said there was speculation that the software for the cards was designed in a way that it automatically allocated January 1 as the birth date to those not aware of their actual date of birth.
That, however, did not explain why those who had submitted their actual date of birth with relevant documents also ended up being shown as born on January 1, he added.
"Once the inquiry is complete and accountability is fixed, suitable action will be taken against those responsible for the massive goof up," he said.
Affected villagers will be provided with fresh Aadhaar cards with correct date of birth soon, he said.