Sikar, Rajasthan/New Delhi: Strange as it may seem, Hindu deity Hanuman of the epic Ramayana has now got a unique identification number — 209470519541.

He has been assigned the 12-digit ID as part of the Indian government’s Aadhar card drive. Not just that, the deity has got a mobile number, an address in North Rajasthan and a father “Pawan-ji”.

Issued in the name of “Hanuman-ji”, the Aadhar card shows the deity wearing a crown and a string of pearls, adorning the same look in that he is worshipped across the country by millions of Hindus.

In the epic Ramayana, Lord Hanuman is the son of Vayu, the Wind god, or “Pawan-ji’.

Last week, the card was delivered to the post office in the Sikar district of Rajasthan. Since there was no authentic recipient for the card, the local postman could not deliver it. The card will now be sent back to Bengaluru from where it was dispatched on September 6.

If an Aadhar card can be issued to Hanuman-ji, it can be issued to anyone, was the message.

The incident highlighted the apprehensions that the data collected by private agencies for issuing the Aadhaar card could be easily misused and manipulated.

“When postman Heera Lal received the card for delivery, he was shocked and brought the matter to the notice of senior officials. When they tried calling the mobile number listed on it, it was found to be switched off. Heera Lal thought that by mistake Hanumanji’s picture must have got placed on the card. So, he tried to search for the man ‘Hanumanji’. Since the address was incomplete, we were forced to open the envelope just to check for more details. But we were shocked to see Lord Hanuman’s photo on the card,” postmaster Gobraj told Gulf News over the phone.

He said the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) should probe the matter further and find out the person behind the mischief to prevent recurrence of such incidents. However, the preliminary probe into the matter suggests the card was made by one Vikas Kumar, a computer operator in Rajasthan, who hit up on the idea of submitting an Aadhar application.

“I tried several times to get an Aadhar card made for myself, but my finger prints were always rejected by the system, so I applied in the name of Hanuman and I gave my address and phone number,” Kumar told Gulf News.

The number Kumar listed on the card belongs to one Ankit who earlier worked in a private agency involved in the process of issuing Aadhar cards.

The Indian government’s Aadhar scheme assigns each citizen a unique identification number after registering his biometrics and fingerprints. However, the Aadhar scheme has been plagued by anomalies since its inception with lakhs of cards remaining undelivered after they were found to be fake.

The stunt by Kumar clearly shows that one can easily get an Aadhar card by paying money to the agents or touts. In the past, illegal migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh have also been found to be availing the facility by paying as little as Rs200 to touts who manage to get around the so-called unbeatable unique identification mechanism. The government outsourced the task of issuing the cards to various private agencies who have been doing so without carrying out proper verification. However, Director General of UIDAI Vijay Madan feels the system is foolproof.

“UIDAI has an accuracy rate of 99.9 per cent, and this incident accounts for less than .1 per cent of the cases which slip through the system. Since the population is so huge, when the absolute number of such cases adds up, it seems huge. This is an exceptional case and it can happen again since UIDAI follows a technological process, and sometime such rare and exceptional cases slip through it. Even if such cases take place, the processes built by the agency soon catch up and clean the system of the data,” Madan told Gulf News.

He said the UIDAI has set certain rules to deal with such cases, which includes blacklisting the agency or registration of a criminal case if the mistake was found to be intentional. The agency involved in the incident has been removed.