Bhubaneswar, November 29: In a major update, State Food Supply and Consumer Welfare Minister Krushna Chandra Patra on Saturday informed the Odisha Assembly that 8,16,056 ration cards have been cancelled in the State during the ongoing e-KYC (electronic know your customer) drive.
Replying to an adjournment motion, the Minister told the House that out of the 8,16,056 cancelled ration cards, 75,030 beneficiaries were Government employees while 45,496 card holders were found to be tax payers. Similarly, 6,95,530 cards were issued in the name of deceased persons.
“As a result, we have saved Rs 210 crore from the State exchequer,” said the Minister.
“Not a single eligible beneficiary has been deleted from the list while 96 per cent of the ration card holders have already done e-KYC authentication,” said the Minister.
The Minister informed that House that State Government has already provided new ration cards to 6,39,827 eligible beneficiaries.
The Odisha Government has been removing dead and ineligible beneficiaries from the public distribution system (PDS) during the ongoing State-wide e-KYC (know your customer) verification process.
The Government attributes the deletion of ration cards to digitisation, Aadhaar seeding, and de-duplication processes, which helped identify duplicate entries, ineligible records and deaths.
The national mandate of e-KYC verification, started in August 2024, has been extended multiple times due to several factors especially poor internet facility in remote areas of the State.
As per data, 3.3 crore people from 96 lakh families of the State are covered under the food security schemes of the Centre and the state. The beneficiaries include 3.26 crore under the National Food Security Act and a little over 6.48 lakh under the State Food Security Scheme.
