NEW DELHI: A Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) audit has uncovered massive discrepancies amounting to over Rs 220 crore in the Ladli Scheme, launched to provide financial assistance for girls’ education.
The audit documents, exclusively accessed by this newspaper, revealed thousands of duplicate and fraudulent registrations, an excess payment of over Rs 41 crore, and a staggering Rs 618.38 crore lying unclaimed.
The report found that the Women and Child Development department overseeing the scheme failed to verify beneficiary details, leading to widespread duplication. It identified over 36,000 cases where beneficiaries’ names, birth dates, and parental information were identical, raising concerns about fraudulent enrollments.
According to the findings, 16,546 duplicate and 131 triplicate registrations were detected among 8.84 lakh active beneficiaries as of December 2022. This resulted in an excess payment of Rs 11.49 crore. In another 20,127 cases, where either the names or dates of birth matched, Rs 29.23 crore was disbursed.
The audit also highlighted that the department did not integrate Aadhaar verification until May 2023, allowing multiple enrollments of the same beneficiary. The department only initiated steps to incorporate the Ladli Scheme into the Direct Benefit Transfer system that May. This failure to ensure a foolproof registration process led to significant financial irregularities.
The CAG flagged another primary concern: nearly 9 percent of beneficiaries were enrolled after turning 18, the scheme’s maturity age, causing a financial loss of Rs 180.92 crore. The audit found that 78,065 beneficiaries who had already crossed the eligible age at enrollment had accounts accumulating funds. “In many cases, the column ‘Date of Birth’ was blank,” it stated.
Meanwhile, a staggering `618.38 crore for beneficiaries remained unspent since the scheme’s inception, even as lakhs of eligible girls have crossed the maturity age, the audit report has revealed.
The initiative was launched in 2008 during the tenure of late former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit to provide financial assistance to girls at different stages of their education and a lump sum amount of up to Rs 1 lakh upon turning 18.
As of December 31, 2022, around 4.9 lakh girls, out of 8.84 lakh active beneficiaries, which amounts to 55% of the scheme’s total active enrollees, had not received their due benefits despite meeting the eligibility criteria,the audit said.
The report states that Rs 236.03 crore remained unclaimed by 1.26 lakh beneficiaries aged 18 to 20 years. Another Rs 224.56 crore was not disbursed to 1.18 lakh beneficiaries between the ages of 20 and 26, while Rs 157.78 crore never went to 77,000 girls now over 26 years old. Additionally, 1,74,960 cases where beneficiaries met the maturity criteria were left unsettled.
The WCD claimed that efforts were made to contact eligible beneficiaries through public notices in the newspapers. However, the audit found that such notices were issued only twice—on September 10, 2020, and June 17, 2022.
It highlighted that the beneficiaries enrolled annually dropped by 69%—from 1,39,773 in 2009-10 to just 43,415 in 2020-21. Girls’ enrolment at birth plummeted from 23,871 in 2009-10 to 3,153 in 2020-21.