44.6 lakh BPL card holders own private cars in state, reveals survey

BENGALURU: With the Anna Bhagya scheme, wherein 10 kg of rice was promised to BPL card holders by the Congress, having been rolled out, the government is undertaking a survey to weed out ineligible beneficiaries. And much to the shock of officials, people owning luxury cars such as BMWs and Audis figure among the beneficiaries.

The government had decided that BPL card holders owning private cars (white registration board) will not be elegible under the Anna Bhagya scheme. Accordingly, the Food and Civil Supplies Department approached the Regional Transport authorities to identify such beneficiaries. Surprisingly, there are 44,62,107 BPL card holders who own private cars.

Last year, the authorities had deleted 12,000 cards of car owners, some of whom owned Mercedes Benz and Audi cars. Also, 20,000 government employees had availed of BPL cards and, in all, Rs 13 crore in penalties was recovered. Now, the government has fresh figures of BPL card holders owning cars and more penalties are expected to be levied.

Over the last two weeks, the authorities are keenly going through the list of beneficiaries and cross-checking it with the data of dead people from the ejanma portal. So far, they have identified 4,65,000 names and are in the process of removing them.

“Apart from this, 60,000 names of APL beneficiaries are also being removed. BPL card holders can voluntarily get the names of dead members removed. We had sent lists to fair price shops for beneficiaries to check and where they raised objection, we have retained about 1,400 names. We are weeding out ineligible beneficiaries”, said Gyanendra Kumar, Managing Director of the Food and Civil Supplies Corporation.

This will lead to a saving of Rs 8 crore for the department. It is also being planned to impose penalties on those who were getting foodgrains in the names of the dead family members, Gyanendra Kumar said.

Gyanendra Kumar, Managing Director, Food and Civil Supplies Corporation.

While no penalties will be imposed on the cards that are being deleted, it is planned to levy fines on those to don’t update records to remove the names of the dead in the family or provide wrong information regarding owning cars along with cancellation of the BPL cards.

The government, which had announced 10 kg of free rice for every BPL family under the Anna Bhagya scheme, has been providing money in lieu of 5 kg of rice through direct benefit transfer while the remaining 5 kg is being provided by the Union government.