NEW DELHI: The mandatory linking of Aadhaar to social security benefits like pension and ration cards has led to thousands of poor not getting benefits earmarked for them, allege RTI activists.Citing information from RTI pleas, information activists said on Tuesday the government’s claim that technology and Aadhaar had helped weed out corruption “was without any basis”.Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey, however, denied the allegations. Pandey clarified that Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act ensured that no one is “excluded” and social benefits are not denied to anyone.“In case an Aadhaar card has not been made, the person can enrol for the same and provide the enrolment number and any other alternative proof of identify to avail of the benefits,” said Pandey.Referring to an RTI query filed on a statement made by PM Narendra Modi that 3.95 crore fake ration cards had been detected by the use of technology and Aadhaar, information activist Anjali Bhardwaj said no such data was available with the government, neither with the PMO nor with the department of food and public distribution (DFPD).“We were hopeful about getting the detailed data vital for our work on hunger and food directly from the PMO as it was a statement made in the Lok Sabha ,” said Bhardwaj. However, the online data available was “Deletion of bogus ration cards by States/UTs”, which was from “July 2006 onwards” and “updated on 16.02.2016”.Bhardwaj said the query was thereafter transferred to state offices, with no consolidated figure coming from any branch of the government on the statement made by the PM. Questioning the methodology for weeding out “fake” accounts, and depriving the poor of their benefits, information activists said the inherent problems with the implementation of the Aadhaar Act had resulted in denial of social benefits to lakhs of marginalised people. Citing examples like the deletion of almost a crore fake job cards from the MGNREGA scheme, Reetika Khera referred to the reply to an RTI query showing that of the over 94 lakh cards cancelled, only 4% were fake. “The RTI, filed on April 2017, revealed that... Other deletions were on account of change in address, mistakes in job cards etc,” said Khera. Government officials, however, said that local authorities need to be roped in and redressal should be demanded wherever benefits were being denied.