Scrutiny on to weed out Ganjam bogus applicants

The Ganjam district administration has started a scrutiny of applications submitted for issue of ration card under the National Food Security Mission (NFSM).

According to information available, district Collector Premchand Choudhury has set August 25 as the deadline for publication of final list of beneficiaries under the scheme. Officials are visiting door-to-door to touch each applicant under all the 40 wards of the Brahmapur Municipal Corporation (BMC) to verify the authenticity of information furnished by the applicants and identify the bogus applicants if any for action, sources said. The officials are said to have identified a large number of bogus applicants and deleted them from the list of beneficiaries, sources said.

Physical checking of applications will take two more days and on August 25, the final list of beneficiaries is expected to be notified, said an official. However, sources close to the administration said that it is not possible to complete the physical verification in respect of all the applicants within two days as the district administration has received 61,000 applications under the BMC alone.

An undisclosed source, however, suggests that thousands of well-to-do families, including businessmen like beetle shop owners, hoteliers, and grocery shop owners who are residing on rent in roof houses and having two wheelers with an unaccounted income in the range of Rs 20,000- Rs 50,000 per month also have submitted their applications to get the benefit of the scheme. Since thousands of applicants have reportedly submitted fabricated information, the officials are facing difficulties to verify the same within the deadline.

In the meantime, apprehending action, several Government employees and well-to-do families reportedly have started withdrawing their applications. There is a huge rush of such applicants in BMC office every day since the district administration has taken action on nine Government servants for suppressing information.According to information available, the BMC has reportedly received around 600 applications in last two days seeking withdrawal of their applications.