Bengaluru: Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department has collected a whopping Rs. 13.5 crore fine from 4.6 lakh ineligible BPL card holders. Ironically, 21,232 such card holders are Government employees from whom alone Rs. 11.2 crore fine was collected.
The drive to weed out ineligible card holders began in Feb. 2022 and the data of such beneficiaries are being collected from various Departments including Transport Department on the basis of their Aadhaar number, as per the report of Additional Director (Vigilance and Public Distribution) Jnanendra Kumar.
It is learnt that, 12,583 BPL beneficiaries had top end cars, while 2.9 lakh farmers owning more than three hectares of land also were enjoying the benefit and 2,679 among them have been traced by Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department. Those 50,000 BPL card holders whose annual income was more than 1.2 lakh were identified through the data available with Income Tax (IT) Department.
To a question, whether it is enough just to let go the Government employees by imposing penalty, the Officer has said: “In the case of first time, the erring Officers have been pardoned, after imposing a hefty fine amount. Among 21,232 such BPL card holders, 17,521 have converted to Above Poverty Line (APL) card.”
While fixing the penalty amount, even the financial status of card holders have been taken into consideration. While hefty fine will be imposed on Government employees and staff, as mentioned in the report.
This post was published on June 1, 2023 7:40 pm