Tiruvarur: Residents of Kattimedu Ellai Nagaladi village near Thiruthuraipoondi reportedly discovered three gunny bags packed with more than 3,000 undistributed Aadhaar cards near river Nulli on Thursday.
According to official sources, the discovery caused a pandemonium in the area, with residents of five neighbouring villages rushing in to hunt for their cards. The officials, when they reached the spot to retrieve the cards, had to literally wade through, warning the crowd off, which was not an easy task as the locals weren’t pleased with the irreverence shown to the most important identification card of these times.
Sources said that men who went to the dry Nulli riverbed early on Thursday morning to attend nature’s call, found three gunny bags thrown there. They opened one and found Aadhaar cards.
They opened one and found Aadhaar cards. On closer inspection, they realised the addresses in the first handful of cards were pretty much in the vicinity. Given the issues that one might have to go through for simply not having the Aadhaar card, the news spread fast. Everybody who was awaiting their cards made a beeline to the spot. When officials reached later in the morning, a sizeable crowd was sifting through the cards, all strewn on the river bed by then.
A team of revenue department officials, led by Thiruthuraipoondi Tahsildar Rajanbabu, collected the remaining cards and filed a complaint at the Thiruthuraipoondi police station. Reportedly, the cards all belonged to residents of Kattimedu, Athirangam, Paamani, Vadapathi, and Thenpathi villages. Preliminary inquiries established that the concerned revenue officials had sent the cards to the Postal Department for distribution. It was alleged that instead of delivering the cards, postal department employees threw them into river Mulliyaru. The police are investigating. Several attempts to reach concerned officials at the postal department went unanswered.
Two senior officials from the postal department, on condition of anonymity, told this correspondent that a departmental enquiry has been launched. Reportedly, the cards were issued in 2013-14 and it is unclear if the cards were discarded before or after delivery. Police have sought the names of officials who served at the Thiruthuraipoondi post office in 2013-14, and the department was committed to helping with the enquiry. Though they insisted that they could make a conclusion only after the enquiries, both officials opined that there was little chances of the postal department being in the wrong.
