Aadhaar must for food under nutrition mission

New Delhi: Aadhaar registration is mandatory for children to avail food under the centrally-sponsored National Nutrition Mission (NNM), Union minister of state for women and child development Virendra Kumar informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.

Stating that the use of Aadhaar as an identity document for delivery of services or benefits or subsidies simplifies the government delivery processes, the minister said that it ushers in transparency and efficiency and enables beneficiaries to get their entitlements directly in a convenient and seamless manner.

“Aadhaar obviates the need for producing multiple documents to prove one’s identity. Aadhaar would be unique identity of the beneficiaries,” Mr Kumar said during Question Hour.

NNM aims to ensure convergence with various programmes, incentivising states and Union Territories to achieve targeted goals, information and communication technology enabled real time monitoring of ICDS, evaluation by Niti Aayog, setting up of national nutrition resource centre at national level and state nutrition resource centre in each state and UT.

At the same time, beneficiaries’ not possessing Aadhaar card would be assisted by the field functionaries to obtain Aadhaar and that till that time, they would be provided the anganwadi services on the basis of alternative identification document, the minister said.

This would help in individual and Aadhaar-based tracking of children for nutritional outcomes and would also aid in area based tracking of under-nutrition status in the country, he said.