Representative image of women with rice from Anna Bhagya scheme.
Credit: DH File Photo
In the last 15 days, the food and civil supplies department has deleted nearly 4.59 lakh ‘deceased beneficiaries,’ who were till last month receiving rations under the below poverty line (BPL) cards. There are 1.27 crore BPL (Antyodaya plus priority households) cards in the state, benefiting 4.36 crore people. However, there were complaints that ‘ghost’ beneficiaries were receiving free food grains.
To weed out these deceased beneficiaries, the government had instructed the department to identify such names and delete them from the records. The department collected the data of deceased persons from eJanma portal of the office of the state’s chief registrar of births and deaths.
The department had identified 5.19 lakh such beneficiaries, out of whom, 4.65 lakh were BPL cardholders and 63,790 were deceased APL cardholders.
All APL cards
Of the 4.65 lakh BPL cardholders, the department has so far deleted 4.55 lakh ghost beneficiaries and all APL ‘ghost’ cardholders over the last 10 days. Sources say the remaining names will be deleted in the next couple of days.
Department joint director Gyanendra Kumar Gangwar said this could help the government save Rs seven crore to Rs eight crore monthly under the ‘Anna Bhagya’ scheme, under which the government intends to provide Rs 170 per person per month, instead of the promised five kg of rice.
Benefit to Centre
He said this move also benefits the central government, which provides five kg rice per person to beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NSFA).
Belagavi had the highest number of ‘deceased beneficiaries’ (42,183), followed by Bengaluru (36,292), Tumakuru (32,175), Mysuru (29,011), and Mandya (22,034). The least number of ‘deceased beneficiaries’ were in Kodagu (5,138), Yadgir (8,447), Bengaluru Rural (9,892), Gadag (10,512), and Ballari (10,902).
Regular feature
Gangwar said, in 2022, the department had undertaken a similar drive to weed out ‘ghost’ beneficiaries and had deleted more than seven lakh names. The joint director said the department intends to undertake this weeding-out process on a regular basis, henceforth.