After PM's praise, ''oldest learner'' Bhageerathi Amma set to get her Aadhaar card

Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala’s great granny, Bhageerathi Amma, who recently won the accolades of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his ‘Man Ki Baat’ radio address for clearing fourth-level examination at the age of 105, is now set to get her Aadhaar card.

Hailing from southern district of Kollam, the centenarian woman had scripted history by becoming the oldest ‘equivalency learner’ by winning the fourth standard equivalency examination conducted by the state-run Kerala State Literacy Mission (KSLM).

While expressing happiness over the prime minister mentioning her name in his monthly radio address last week, Bhageerathi Amma had said her only sorrow was that she was yet to get her Aadhaar card.

The chances of getting government welfare pension were gone as she had no Aadhaar card, the granny said.

The officials of a nationalised bank, who came to know about the plight of the woman through media, recently visited her at her home and completed all necessary procedures to get her enrolled in Aadhaar.

She has now got the acknowledgement receipt for the Aadhaar enrolment and the card is expected to be issued in the next two days, a KSLM official said.

“Bhageerathi Amma tried to get Aadhaar card before also but unfortunately she could not make it due to technical reasons. Her fingerprint and retinal scan could not be taken due to old age,” the official told PTI.

While narrating the story of Bhagirathi Amma, Modi had said in his radio address that, “If we wish to progress in life, we should develop ourselves, if we wish to achieve something in life, the first pre-condition for that is the student within us must never die.”

The woman had appeared for the examination, conducted by the state literacy mission, at Kollam last year and the result was announced recently.

The woman, who had always yearned to study and gain knowledge, had to give up her dream of educating herself after her mother died as she had to take care of her younger siblings.

Bhageerathi Amma had left formal education in class three at the age of 9.

Due to her advanced age, she had difficulty in writing the exams and took three days to complete the three question papers on environment, mathematics and Malayalam, literacy mission sources said.

She scored 205 out of a total of 275 marks and scored full marks in maths, they said.

One of her six children and three of her 15 grandchildren are no more.

The woman has 12 grand and great-grandchildren.