As many as 15,00,405 ineligible beneficiaries have been excluded from the list of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) cardholders by June 10, and the number seems to rise further as more such beneficiaries are likely to surrender cards by August 13 for fear of legal action.
Beneficiaries, who have obtained digitised ration cards to get subsidised rice and wheat under the NFSA by furnishing false information, are being excluded. By now, 4,03,785 ration cards either have been cancelled or returned.
Notably, the State Government had set a target to include 3, 26, 41,250 eligible person under the NFSA. Accordingly, households comprising 3.15 crore people were issued over 83 lakh ration cards by end of previous financial year. There were nine criteria for addition of genuine beneficiaries under the scheme and five criteria for exclusion of beneficiaries from the centrally sponsored scheme.
Under NFSA guidelines set by the Centre, the bogus ration cardholders such as APls counted fraudulently as BPls would be excluded. The persons like beggars, destitute, pension holder widows, particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) and persons having 40 per cent or above disabilities would be included under the scheme.
Except Antodaya Anna Yojana, APl families of KBK districts, BPl families across the State and poor/left-out family concepts have been discarded.
However, provisions for SC/ST boarders, fisherman families and persons with differently abled schemes would not be covered under the Act. The State Government would have to shoulder the responsibility for these categories.
The nine exclusion criteria include monthly income of over Rs 15,000 in urban area and over Rs 10,000 in rural area, income tax payers, persons having four wheelers, electric consumption above 300 units per month, State and Union Government employees, persons having tractors, power-tillers, fishing boats or any other heavy vehicles, persons having entrepreneurship and professional tax payers.