Audit flags duplication in registration of beneficiaries
NEW DELHI: The latest report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), released on Monday, has raised serious questions about the credibility of the Building and Other Construction (BOC) Workers Welfare Board’s beneficiary database, pointing to glaring lapses in digital protocols and beneficiary verification processes.
Duplicate images, photographs without identifiable faces, and multiple registrations of the same individual raise concerns over the possible misuse of funds and the exclusion of genuine beneficiaries.
In its audit for the year ending March 2023, the CAG revealed troubling inconsistencies in the registration of BOC workers. Despite claims of Aadhaar-verified online registrations and renewals, auditors found multiple instances of duplicate registrations, images with no human faces, and the same facial images being linked to different beneficiaries.
According to the report, while the welfare board had claimed to have registered nearly 6.96 lakh construction workers, it was able to furnish full data, including image links and actual images, for only 1.98 lakh individuals.
Of these, 1.19 lakh beneficiaries were linked to 2.38 lakh images, suggesting that the same image was used more than once, despite Aadhaar authentication being mandatory.
Further scrutiny revealed that in 14.8 percent of the 1.98 lakh images submitted, either multiple faces were visible in a single frame or no discernible face could be detected at all.
In one instance, a batch of 45 images were associated with 97 workers. “In 29,453 (14.8 per cent) out of 1.98 lakh images, either multiple (several) faces were available, or no face was available. It was also found that 1,440 faces appeared in 3,116 images at the 0.20 threshold and 2,495 faces appeared in 5,595 images at 0.30 per cent threshold, indicating that the same image was used multiple times,” the report read.
“These discrepancies indicate that the veracity of the beneficiary data maintained by the Board is highly questionable,” the auditors noted, adding that the integrity of the welfare board’s database could not be relied upon. The presence of duplicate images, photographs without identifiable faces, and multiple registrations of the same individual raise concerns over the possible misuse of funds and the exclusion of genuine beneficiaries.
When the auditors confronted the Delhi Government with the findings, the administration responded that that video of each registered worker was being made mandatory at the time of migration and fresh registration as a corrective measure. “However, the fact remains that the Department failed to provide a complete and credible database for scrutiny during audit,” the CAG report noted.
Highlights
The audit report found duplicate registrations using the same facial images
Nearly 15% of submitted photos were unclear or had multiple faces
Full data available for only 1.98L of 6.96L workers
Flawed records risk exclusion of genuine workers & funds misuse