The Jharkhand government has made Aadhaar mandatory for social security pensions. It is claimed that this has resulted in the deletion of three lakh “fake” pensioners in 2016–17. A recent household survey in Khunti town, however, reveals that fakes and duplicates make up only a fraction of the deleted pensioners, and a very small proportion of all pensions. Instead, many genuine pensioners have been excluded
in the process.
