Mumbai: In a special verification drive, the Maharashtra government’s food and civil supplies department has deleted over 7.5 million names from the list of beneficiaries of free food-grain schemes after the Centre flagged 17.8 million ration-card holders as potentially ineligible for exceeding the income limit, officials aware of the developments said.
Using data collated from eight departments—including the income tax department, transport authorities and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)—as well as schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan), the Centre prepared and shared a list of beneficiaries suspected of being ineligible for free food grains, officials said.
The Centre left it to the states to delete the names after verification. In Maharashtra, the verification drive began in July last year, during which officials conducted house-to-house visits to check the details of flagged beneficiaries. Following this exercise, 7.5 million names have been deleted so far.
Maharashtra has over 68 million beneficiaries receiving free 5 kg of ration per person per month, registered through 16.5 million yellow and orange ration cards. Yellow ration cards are issued to families with an annual income of up to ₹15,000, while orange cards are given to families with an annual income not exceeding ₹1 lakh, among other criteria.
The Centre flagged 17.8 million names with these cards for having high landholdings of over one hectare. However, the Maharashtra government did not delete these names from the list, as landholding is not a parameter under the income-based eligibility criteria, officials said. The state government then launched a drive in which officials visited the homes of the remaining 9.4 million flagged beneficiaries to verify their status.
During the drive, beneficiaries who had died or moved out were removed from the list. “As many as 7.5 million of the 9.4 million beneficiaries have already been deleted by the state government, and verification of the remaining beneficiaries is underway,” said an official from the food and civil supplies department.
“The 5-kg ration of wheat and rice per person per family member is totally sponsored by the central government, and Maharashtra gets the ration for 70 million people. After the deletion of the 7.5 million beneficiaries for their elevation in the monthly income, that many new beneficiaries who are on the waiting list will be added to the list,” the official said.
Ration card holders who have exceeded the income slab were issued white ration cards after their exclusion from the scheme, the official added. White ration cards are issued to families with an annual income of ₹1 lakh or more.
After the Centre introduced free and subsidised ration under the National Food Security Act in 2013, the Maharashtra government set annual family income limits of ₹44,000 and ₹59,000, respectively, for eligibility. “The government has now proposed to increase the income limit and has set up a committee under Chandrakant Dange, controller of rationing and director of civil supplies,” said the official.
The new income limit will be based on hunger indicators, the wages of skilled and unskilled workers from organised and unorganised sectors, and the per capita income, the official added.
“The limit in other states has been increased and ranges between ₹1.4 lakh and ₹2.4 lakh,” said Dange. “We will decide on a new family income limit after studying all parameters supported by data. Because of the low income threshold, Mumbai and Thane are falling short of the Centre’s target by nearly 150,000 beneficiaries.”