93,239 persons found eligible

Avneet Kaur

Jalandhar, February 9

A revision of the list of the social security scheme beneficiaries ordered by the Congress government has led to the deletion of the names of as many as 24,248 beneficiaries in the district.

Earlier, the district had 1,17,487 beneficiaries of various social welfare schemes. The number has now come down to 93,239. Apart from that, the verification of the 1,000 beneficiaries who had recently responded to the district administration notice is going on. Their credentials are being checked by the Municipal Corporation, said officials at the Social Security office.

With 98 per cent of the survey work complete, the staff at the District Social Security office said, “As the re-verification was done by different teams in rural areas and by the MC in urban areas, the survey took time to be completed and was delayed. The teams were assigned to do the re-verification of the list made earlier to make sure any genuine beneficiary is not removed from the list.”

“The beneficiaries have started receiving their dues. They last received the benefits in December. Only those who were found ineligible, have been struck off in the list and are not getting any benefits,” they added. Ravinder Singh, District Social Security Officer, said, “The verification process is in its last stage and is about to be completed within a week or two. It is being done with utmost care. Still, if any genuine beneficiary has been removed from the list, he/she may approach us.”

The verification got started in June and is still going on.

“Till now we had not declared the beneficiaries falling under wrong address or unavailable at the time of survey as bogus or ineligible. We are getting the data re-verified and sending our teams to locate the persons,” he added.

He also said, “If any beneficiary contacts us and provides authentic documents, he/she will be added. The grounds on which we deleted the beneficiaries included claimants of age less than 60, annual income if more or having land above 2.5 acres or house above 100 sq yards, wrong address or if they were found unavailable at the mentioned address and if any beneficiary was found dead, his/her name was deducted from the list.”

Notably, after the Congress came to power, it ordered a verification of the authenticity of the beneficiaries of the various schemes to make sure that the funds were being used judiciously and that the schemes had not been misused by the SAD-BJP leaders.