Gurugram: Income, caste verification of 350k families begins

The Gurugram administration has begun the verification of the income and caste documents of almost 350,000 families that had registered for the Haryana government’s Parivar Pehchan Patra, or Family ID card scheme, said an official familiar with the development

The Gurugram administration has begun the verification of the income and caste documents of almost 350,000 families that had registered for the Haryana government’s Parivar Pehchan Patra, or Family ID card scheme, said an official familiar with the development.

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At least 14 teams have been formed to cover the families in August in a phased manner, they added.

The scheme was introduced in 2019 to create a database of Haryana’s domicile population and link it to over 500 government benefits, including those of the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram. In December 2020, the Haryana government issued a gazette notification that made the scheme mandatory to avail any government service in the state, including caste-specific and income-specific services, water and sewer connections, town planning schemes, arms licence, tenant and domestic help verification, among others.

“Verification is the second stage of the process. The teams first spoke to them over telephone and will now visit them in-person to cross-check their documents. Social workers, volunteers and students have been deployed to conduct the verification,” said a senior district administration official who preferred not to be named.

The state administration first collected the details of government employees and then reached out to Below Poverty Line (BPL) population who are already availing many of these benefits.

In the first phase of the verification process, around 21,000 families will be covered within a week, while the rest will be covered in the second phase, said the official quoted above. The official added that the family ID cards will be first be issued to 100,000 BPL families.

Earlier this week, the Gurugram deputy commissioner had directed officials to finish the verification of about 21, 285 families by the end of the week.

According to government estimates, about 450,000 are expected to qualify for the scheme. But the district administration has been facing problems in reaching out to people living in condominiums and gated societies. “Despite several meetings with the RWAs to hold registration camps within societies, there hasn’t been any fruitful response,” said the official.