E-KYC error halts aid for 24 lakh Ladki Bahin Yojana beneficiaries

A flawed question in the eKYC process for the Ladki Bahin Yojana has resulted in more than 24 lakh women beneficiaries in Maharashtra being wrongly classified as government employees leading to the abrupt stoppage of their monthly financial assistance reported news agency PTIAnganwadi workers deployed for physical verificationThe error acknowledged by the Women and Child Welfare Department WCD has now forced the government to deploy nearly one lakh anganwadi workers across the state to physically verify the affected beneficiariesConfusing Marathi wording led to incorrect responsesA senior official from the department on Wednesday said one of the questions in the eKYC form was wrongly framed using two negative words instead of a simple query reported PTIThe question in Marathi read Tumchya gharatle koni sarkari nokrit nahi na Nobody in your family works for the government right reported PTIBeneficiaries selected wrong option due to sentence structureOfficials said that beneficiaries who should have answered no marked yes due to the confusing sentence construction reported PTIThe question confused the respondents and around 24 lakh replied in the affirmative This was automatically taken to mean that at least one family member was a government employee and the system stopped the monthly payment the WCD official saidData review exposes scale of discrepancyThe scale of the error became clear during data review the official said as Maharashtra has 8 to 9 lakh government employees including those in semigovernment bodies and corporations reported PTIComplaints poured in over nonreceipt of instalmentsWe also started receiving complaints from different parts of the state regarding nonpayment of the monthly instalment of Rs 1500 given under the scheme he said reported PTIMinister orders verification drive to correct recordsState Women and Child Welfare Minister Aditi Tatkare in a post on X on Tuesday night said the physical verification of these beneficiaries would be carried out by anganwadi workers to correct the recordsThe eKYC exercise covered around 230 crore beneficiaries and was aimed at ensuring eligibility under the scheme The deadline for completing eKYC was December 31 2025Rs 3700 crore disbursed monthly under schemeThe state releases around Rs 3700 crore every month for nearly 225 crore beneficiaries with each eligible woman receiving Rs 1500 per monthThe eKYC exercise was taken up following complaints that men were receiving the assistance or that government employees had been registered as beneficiariesPrevious audit revealed men govt staff as illegal beneficiariesLast month in a written reply to the state legislative council Tatkare said the verification drive had revealed serious misuse of the schemeAs many as 14298 men were identified as having received financial benefits under the scheme meant exclusively for women and more than 1500 state government employees were found to have illegally claimed the assistance she informed the HouseRecovery proceedings initiated against ineligible claimantsThe government has initiated recovery proceedings against the men and government employees who wrongly availed of the benefits the minister had saidWith inputs from PTI