Coimbatore: Saroja Periyathambi, a 64-year-old resident of Kaamalapuram in Omalur taluk, Salem district, was taken aback when she saw the picture of a pretty young woman on her PDS smart card that she collected from the local ration shop on Tuesday."When I collected the card I did not notice the photo. When I came home, I saw the photo was of a young woman and not mine. My grandchildren and relatives told me the photo was that of actor Kajal Agarwal. We went to the shop and informed them about this," Saroja said. Also, her date of birth was misprinted on the card.Arul Prakash, district supplies officer (incharge) of Omalur taluk, told TOI that he got to know about the error through the new media. "I immediately went to the village and met Saroja. I ensured that she received the corrected card within an hour. This was probably due to a mistake in uploading the information into the system," he told TOI. The collector has issued a show cause notice against Arul Prakash and the employee at the ration shop. "The woman in charge of entering the data is a physically disabled person and is only class 8 pass," he said.An official said the data entry process is done in a browsing centre. "Someone must have downloaded Kajal Aggarwal's image and the employee would have scanned Saroja's image and saved it in downloads. There is a possibility that the mix-up happened while renaming the image," said the official. "But to not know the difference between a 64-year-old woman and a popular young actress is unforgivable," said an official.Meanwhile, this goof invited harsh criticism from various quarters. PMK leader Ramadoss said this was not the first time such incidents had surfaced and slammed the negligence of the government staff. Other opposition leaders said that since this is an important process that involved data entry into software, only educated people should be used for the job.Sources told TOI that this was not the first such complaint. "In Omalur alone there have been 24 complaints so far. If people around Saroja had not informed the media, this would also have been hushed up and she would have been made to run from pillar to post to get the correction done," said an official.

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