Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government has weeded out over one lakh ineligible beneficiaries from its ration card database as part of an ongoing verification exercise, Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Krushna Chandra Patra told the State Assembly on Wednesday.
Responding to a query from MLA Tankadhar Tripathy, the minister said that under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) and the State Food Security Scheme (SFSS), nearly 97.40 lakh families, covering 3.25 crore people, are currently availing free food grains.
During the latest scrutiny, officials identified and removed 30,125 ration cards covering 1,09,853 members who were found ineligible. In addition, the names of 6,38,996 deceased beneficiaries have been deleted from the records.
The deletions, Patra said, have created space for genuine applicants to be added to the system. So far, 2,05,384 new families comprising 3,87,819 members have been included under the food security schemes. At present, another 5,09,606 fresh applications are undergoing field verification across the state.
The minister further informed that the government has laid down 10 exclusion criteria for identifying ineligible beneficiaries. Ration card data is being cross-verified with other departmental databases, and the names of deceased persons flagged during e-KYC verification are being promptly removed to keep records clean and updated.
