In a bid to remove duplicate and bogus ration cards from the system, the government has scrapped 1.6 crore such ration cards, which saved it a whopping Rs 10,000 crore in annual bill subsidy.
The information was announced by Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa who also highlighted that the government has so far saved 14,872 crore by making Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) for providing subsidies for LPG cooking gas.
The government intends to extend DBT to other schemes for better targeting and stamping out bogus users, thus checking diversion to non-intended beneficiaries The concept of DBT was created to identify fraud if any, in the government benefits that are provided to people through the use of Aadhaar card.
As on March 31, 2015, there were 11 crore households with public distribution system (PDS) ration cards. Similarly, DBT on LPG, code named PAHAL, has helped weed out Rs 3.5 crore duplications and bogus users, helping save Rs 14,982 crore in annual fuel subsidy.
