States told to weed out free ration recipients by Sept 30

• 10% of 800 mn are ineligible recipients: Survey

- SANDIP DAS

The Union Food Ministry has urged states to complete the process of weeding out ineligible beneficiaries under the free ration scheme — Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), by the end of the month.

Sources said the purpose of carrying out such an exercise was to expedite the process of bringing deserving people into the beneficiary lists and take out the non-deserving beneficiaries.

There are regional variations in the waitlist — Delhi has about 1.1 million people in the list, while Maharashtra has about 88,000.

Earlier, in an exercise by the Food Ministry, about 10% of the existing 800 million beneficiaries under PMGKAY, after inter-ministerial data convergence, were found to appear in one or more databases, such as taxpayers, car owners and company directors, and may not qualify as per the eligibility norms prescribed by respective states.