IEP Chandigarh, August 29
Haryana Chief Minister, Sh. Manohar Lal said that Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) is an ambitious programme of the state government whose primary objective is to deliver welfare schemes and other services of Government at the doorstep of the beneficiary.
The Chief Minister was speaking on the calling attention motion tabled by the members on Parivar Pehchan Patra during the monsoon session of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha today.
Sh. Manohar Lal said that PPP draws from the digital infrastructure and principles created by Aadhar. However, it is many times more complicated than Aadhar in its delivery. Aadhar primarily keeps unique identity information whereas PPP goes far beyond to maintain socio-economic information besides unique identity information in the form of Aadhar. Aadhar does not verify any data except identity e.g., date of birth is not verified in Aadhar. On the other hand, PPP verifies every information field available with it through specific procedures. This enables PPP to pro- actively identify beneficiaries unlike Aadhar which cannot enable identification of beneficiaries but can only eliminate duplication., said Sh. Manohar Lal.
The Chief Minister said that Aadhar took over 6 years to achieve mass scale and integration with schemes whereas PPP has been able to achieve it in over 2 years despite the Coronavirus pandemic intervening in between. Similar to Aadhar, PPP has also undergone a process of self-improvement and correction to iron out difficulties and issues faced on implementation. Under the circumstances, Haryana has shown a path to every state in the country to take forward the advantages offered by Aadhar.
He said that the primary objective of PPP is to provide benefits to the beneficiary at the doorstep proactively without undergoing a separate inspection or verification process by each Government agency or having to submit documents as proof or visit any government office. In the last year, many schemes and services have been linked to PPP for pro-active delivery.
“PPP has a compilation of the data elements of all individuals in a family which are required by different government agencies for the purpose of determining eligibility for schemes and services. Each data field is verified through customized and defined procedures. The data for each family is collected on the basis of a signed self-declaration made by an adult member of the family and then separately verified., said the Chief Minister.
He said that PPN also has family relationships built in and an 8-digit Family Id is provided to each unique family. The dynamism of the family structure is also maintained and updated at all times, wherein changes made due to life events such as birth, death or marriage is, to the extent electronically feasible, automatically captured and updated.
The Chief Minister said that Parivar Pehchan Number eliminates the need for submission of affidavits or documents for many schemes and services. For example, for issue of a Scheduled Caste certificate, the applicant previously had to submit an affidavit with an application which had to be verified by the lumberdar, patwari, Kanungo and thereafter issued by the Tehsildar in the physical mode. After the launch of pro-active issue of Scheduled Caste certificates through PPP in April 2022, the applicant has to go online and authenticate his credentials using OTP on the registered mobile number and thereafter print the SC certificate, said Sh. Manohar Lal.
“Over 6.96 lakh certificates have been issued till 25th August, 2023 after the launch of the scheme. Similarly, over 4.69 lakh BC(A) and BC(B) certificates have been issued pro-actively since the launch of the service in July 2022. During admissions to State Government educational institutions, the applicant student only needs to provide his or her PPN whereafter the SC, BC (A) and BC(B) status is verified automatically. Admissions to all colleges were introduced in July 2022 and the facility has been extended to admissions to all schools, universities, ITIs and polytechnics from the current academic year.” said the Chief Minister.
Sh. Manohar Lal said that the expansion of the delivery of public welfare schemes like benefit of subsidized rations under the Public Distribution System (PDS) to Below Poverty Line (BPL), pro-active benefit of Old Age Samman Allowance, Divyang Pension benefits, Mukhyamantri Vivah Shagun Yojana, Mukhyamantri Antyodyay Parivar Utthan Yojana etc have been made possible because of implementation of PPP.
The Chief Minister informed that over a net of 9.67 lakh ration cards have been added since January 2022 benefitting a large section of the deserving population that was earlier being denied the benefits of PDS besides the elimination of a large number of ineligible beneficiaries. This may be contrasted with the position prior to the introduction of PPP. A BPL survey was conducted in 2004 which had to be cancelled because of significant public opposition. Thereafter a fresh survey was conducted in 2007 by the Haryana Ex-Servicemen League. This too could not be completed because of public outcry and litigation. CWP No. 1581 of 2010 filed before the High Court of Punjab and Haryana carried the prayer to remove ineligible families from the list of BPL which were identified based on the 2007 survey. Several instances of such families were quoted in the petition. Examples were given in the CWP of families consisting of public servants, had large land holding or high incomes were issued ration cards. An instance was also quoted of a family which though one combined family, had been split into many to receive more than one ration card. Disciplinary action was initiated on the directions of the High Court against several officials besides action against the Haryana Ex-servicemen League, he added.
“The PPP has attempted to address these issues by linking with several other databases which bear income or asset characteristics and by introducing the concept of Exclusions’ besides checking the splitting of families, which aim at preventing frauds of the nature mentioned in the said Civil Writ Petition.”, said Sh. Manohar Lal.
He said that PPP also has procedures for dynamic corrections of data to smoothen any discrepancies that come to notice thereby ensuring that those deserving are able to access the benefits and those ineligible are identified, and benefits discontinued.
The Chief Minister said that the Old Age Samman Allowance benefits have been linked pro-actively to PPP. The verification process of all those in the age group of 59 to 70 are being identified including those who were left out in the earlier process and their consent is being sought for start of the Allowance. This process is likely to be completed by September 2023. However, as and when a beneficiary is identified, the data is pushed to the Social Justice, Empowerment and Welfare of SCs, BCs and Antyodyay (SEWA) Department for seeking the consent of the beneficiary and starting pension benefits. Till August 25, 2023, 1,03,828 beneficiaries have received Old Age Samman Allowance via the proactive mode and data of another 90,000 has recently been pushed by PPP to SEWA recently for seeking consent of beneficiaries.
Sh. Manohar Lal said that from the beginning of the pro-active scheme, the number of those who have denied consent due to incorrect verification is 18,871 which is only 10.1 percent of the total pushed. Old Age Samman Allowance was halted for 63,353 beneficiaries on account of self-declared data by families in PPP. On verification, allowance has been restored to 44,050 beneficiaries. Thereby, Old Age Samman Allowance has been stopped on account of PPP for only 19,303 beneficiaries of which 17,661 cases are those where the beneficiary has been conclusively proven to be dead on the basis of data in the Register of Deaths maintained online by the Registrar General of India, he added.
The Chief Minister said that this may again be contrasted with the position that existed earlier. In the case of Old Age Samman Allowance too, CWP no. 801 of 2017 was filed alleging wrongdoing in the identification of beneficiaries and seeking action against officials who had sanctioned the Old Age Samman Allowance wrongly since 2010 besides recovery of the allowance amount. The matter is currently sub-judice.
He said that PPP attempts to place multiple and regular checks in the implementation of the scheme so that even if any beneficiary is wrongly identified, then the same can be identified at any time including at the time of obtaining consent.
The Chief Minister said that in the current academic year 2023-24, 3.52 lakh fresh admissions have been made in private and govemment schools based on PPP data. Similarly, 1.28 lakh admissions have been made in colleges through the Online Admission Portal of the Department of Higher Education using PPP data. Admissions to Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) is still underway and till date 1.01 lakh registrations using PPP for admission to ITIs has been received on the Online Admission Portal of the Department of Skill Development and Industrial Training, of which 61,405 admissions have been made. A total of 37,531 registrations have been done for admissions to technical education institutions through PPP data and the admission process is still underway. Last year 31,071 admissions were made in State Government funded Universities using PPP data while this year admissions are underway. No case of admission denial has been brought to notice of Government as a result of PPP data, he added.
The Chief Minister said that The Haryana Parivar Pehchan Act came into force in September 2021. The HPPA act is a comprehensive legislation that lays out clearly the legal tenets for fundamental issues such as privacy and data integrity as also operational areas such as data repository, the data fields that can be stored in PPP, mechanisms for data updation etc. It is in compliance with the legal structure for laid out by the Supreme Court in the case of K.S Puttuwamy & anr. vs Union of India on the right to privacy in the context of implementation of Aadhar. Two challenges to the implementation of PPP through civil writ petitions have been dismissed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Sh. Manohar lal said that PPP has a robust correction and grievance redressal mechanism through online portals. In order to address the data issues, elaborate mechanisms and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) have been devised for data updation and correction in the data fields via the ‘Correction Module’ and for raising grievances in case of service denial via the Grievance module. For both of these, citizen can raise a request directly by himself or on the assisted mode on the portal. From July 2021 onwards till date, 52,98,352 requests have been received in the Correction module, of which 46,75,211 cases have been resolved. Similarly, in the Grievance module from June 2022 onwards till date, 10,07,210 grievances have been received, of which 9,62,419 have been resolved, he added.
He said that 77,111 correction requests for caste category were received from July 2021 till 26 August, of which 74,290 issues have been resolved and 2191 requests are pending. In case of Mark as Alive, 7,583 correction requests have been received since July 2021 till 26 August, of which 7,423 cases have been settled leaving only 160 requests are pending. In the case of spouse name corrections, in the same period 16,362 correction requests have been received of which 16,290 cases have been settled leaving 272 cases pending.
He said that Correction of mobile number is done on the automatic mode based on the mobile number linked to the Aadhar number of the Head of Family. 11,56,222 cases for mobile number correction have been received of which all have been resolved.
The Chief Minister said that the certain manipulations by field operators were noticed in the “Add Member correction facility” and FIR is being registered against such operators. Improvements are being made to the defined procedure for the “Add Member” correction facility to prevent such manipulations. He said that Verification processes are nearing completion in the critical fields for delivery Verification has been completed for 89.9 percent of all families claiming any specific caste category status (36.42 lakhs) in their self-declaration. Verification has been completed for 90.7 percent of all persons (2.78 crore citizens) for date of birth. Income verification has been completed for 97.2 percent of all signed families (68.29 lakhs) in PPP. Occupation verifications are still underway and are likely to be completed by October 2023, he added.
Sh. Manohar lal said that PPP has been designed, developed and implemented through in-house resources and no vendor or company has been appointed for the purpose. The expenditure on implementation of PPP has been minimal and largely done to Government employees who have been co-opted as Team Leads in the 19,825 Local Committees and 1082 Sector Committees that have been constituted in the field. No remuneration is provided to the other members of the Local Committees and Sector Committees other than the Team Lead and the Local Operator, he added.
The Chief Minister said that the major portion of the budget was spent on payment for Government employees and Various computer operators and government functionaries tasked with different verification responsibilities. For example in FY 2022-23, out of the total expenditure of Rs 47.82 crore, Rs 21.97 crore was paid to Government servants for verification, Rs 3.16 crore to Local Operators and Rs 18.54 lakhs to ASHA workers. This is besides the salary payments to office staff in the office of Additional Deputy Commissioners who have been designated as District Citizen Resource Information Officers for administration of PPP in the field.
Sh. Manohar lal said that just like other large scale digital initiatives at the national level such as Aadhar and UPI, the PPP mechanism is continuously evolving to deliver the intended benefits to the people of the State.