Chandigarh: The lack of ration card advantages for over 8 lakh households in Haryana has kicked up a political storm within the state, with the Opposition accusing the Manohar Lal Khattar authorities of arbitrarily leaving out the poor from the general public distribution system (PDS).
In keeping with Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Singh Chautala’s assertion within the state meeting Monday, 8.41 lakh folks have misplaced pink-card and yellow-card advantages after they have been discovered “ineligible”.
Authorities guidelines say inexperienced playing cards are issued to above-poverty-line households (APL), yellow is for beneath poverty line (BPL), and pink is for the poorest of the poor, who’re eligible for the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY).
On the centre of the row is the Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) or the Household ID, the state authorities’s flagship e-governance scheme.
The BJP-led authorities claims that the PPP scheme, which is ruled by the Haryana Parivar Pehchan Patra Act of 2021, is to advertise the paperless supply of welfare providers.
The Opposition Congress, nonetheless, accuses the federal government of intentionally denying the state’s poor not solely PDS advantages but additionally their old-age pensions, through PPP.
Talking to ThePrint over the telephone Wednesday, Chief of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda claimed that he had obtained complaints that a number of folks had been intentionally unnoticed of the PDS scheme by “quoting exaggerated revenue figures”. Individuals are additionally being denied their pensions on the identical floor, he mentioned.
“Folks dwelling in depressing circumstances complain that their ration playing cards have been discontinued saying that their household revenue proven in PPP is in a number of lakhs,” Hooda mentioned. “As well as, folks have instructed me their old-age pension has been discontinued citing incorrect figures of their revenue. Over 5 lakh folks have misplaced their old-age pension due to this.”
Responding to a query in Vidhan Sabha Monday, Dushyant Chautala mentioned the ration card holders have been discovered ineligible on the idea of the info supplied by the Citizen Assets Info Division (CRID).
The CRID is a Haryana authorities division chargeable for the implementation of the PPP scheme.
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What’s the PPP?
In keeping with the Haryana authorities, the PPP is supposed to “create genuine, verified and dependable knowledge of all households in Haryana”.
“PPP identifies every household in Haryana and retains the fundamental knowledge of the household, supplied with the consent of the household, in a digital format,” the state authorities’s official web site for the Household ID says.
Every household might be supplied an eight-digit Household ID, which might be linked to the delivery, dying, and marriage information “to make sure automated updation of the household knowledge as and when such life occasions occur”, the web site says.
The ID will, amongst different issues, be linked to unbiased schemes like scholarships, subsidies, and pensions “to allow the automated collection of beneficiaries of varied schemes, subsidies, and pensions”.
“The info accessible within the Household ID database might be used to find out eligibility by which automated self-selection of beneficiaries might be finished for receiving advantages,” the web site says.
“Due to this fact, as soon as the database of households is created, households needn’t then apply to obtain advantages beneath every particular person scheme. Additional, as soon as the info within the PPP database is authenticated and verified, a beneficiary is not going to be required to submit any extra paperwork,” says the web site.
In his tackle throughout the Haryana meeting funds session, Governor Bandaru Dattatreya mentioned that the federal government was going to extend PPP’s scope to cowl all authorities databases and schemes.
Earlier this month, the Khattar authorities claimed that Uttar Pradesh’s Yogi Adityanath authorities was contemplating implementing the same scheme.
‘Poor evaluation standards’
The old-age pension is a social safety scheme beneath which senior residents over 60 are given an ‘Outdated Age Samman Allowance’.
In keeping with the circumstances laid down by the federal government, the pension is given to folks whose annual revenue from all sources doesn’t exceed Rs 2 lakh a yr, supplied the individual doesn’t obtain a pension from any authorities or native statutory physique.
In his response to a query within the Vidhan Sabha, Chautala mentioned 8,41,817 folks have been discovered ineligible for ration card advantages in December 2022 as a result of their household incomes exceeded the restrict for the PDS.
With the intention to be eligible for yellow playing cards, Chautala mentioned, the household’s annual revenue must be lower than Rs 1.80 lakh and that, for a pink card, one needed to be on the backside of the checklist of these with lower than that revenue.
Regardless of Hooda’s claims on old-age pensions, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, in reply to a different query the identical day, had mentioned that, as on 13 March, the old-age pension of twenty-two,198 folks stood discontinued on the idea of the PPP knowledge.
Criticising the Khattar authorities, Hooda mentioned that the shortage of an goal criterion for assessing household revenue was responsible for the issue. “Once I was chief minister, self-declaration was enough proof,” he instructed ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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