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RANCHI: The Women, Child Development and Social Security Department will now make ration cards mandatory before transferring the aid for Maiyan Samman Yojana.
This move comes amid the large-scale fraud in registration for Maiyan Samman Yojana. Making ration cards mandatory will ensure that the beneficiary is a domicile of Jharkhand.
According to officials, the department will get each and every beneficiary’s name verified with the ration card before transferring the aid to their bank accounts.
Government sources informed that the nodal department has sought approval from the Food and Supply Department to use the Application Program Interface (API) of the ration card portal.
As per the information received, the nodal department has also decided to check the actual status of the beneficiaries through many other software interfaces, which incudes, National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), National Informatics Center (NIC) and Public Financial Management System (PFMS).
With this, the social security wing will be able to check whether the age of the female beneficiary is between 18 to 50 years and if she is a resident of Jharkhand or not.
“Ration card is mandatory to avail the benefits of Maiyan Samman Yojana. After API approval by the Food and Supply Department, it will be confirmed that the beneficiary's name is registered in the ration card, and she is a resident of Jharkhand,” said Social Security Director Samira S.
The Food and Supply Department is getting Aadhaar linked to the ration card which will make Aadhaar verification of the beneficiaries easy, she added.
According to the official, if the Aadhaar of the beneficiary is not linked to the Pubic Distribution System (PDS), then the Women and Child Development Department will do Aadhaar verification through Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).
Meanwhile, making a major change from April this year, financial assistance will be given only to those beneficiaries who have Aadhaar linked single bank accounts.
Notably, a lot of irregularities came to light during the physical verification of the beneficiaries following reports of huge fraud by the computer operators while filling up the forms for the scheme.
In one such case, 95 applicants of Maiyan Samman Yojana were found linked to a single bank account, which was opened recently in West Bengal.
During the investigation, it was found that the bank account of Yusuf, a resident of Patagoda, Barakhanti, in North Dinajpur district of West Bengal, was used 95 times for making applications for Maiyan Samman Yojana.
Earlier too, several complaints of fraud related to Maiyan Samman Yojana were received from across the state where the money was being transferred to the bank accounts of wives and daughters of some government employees.
Based on those reports, names of ineligible beneficiaries are being deleted from the list.
Maiyan Samman Yojna, Hemant Soren Government’s flagship programme under which women between the age group of 18-49 gets Rs 2500 every month.
Finance Minister Radha Krishna Kishore tabled the annual Budget of Rs 1, 45,400 crore for FY 2025-26 in the Jharkhand Assembly, out of which Rs 13,363 crore has been allocated for the Maiyan Samman Yojana.