State plans unique family card on lines of Haryana’s Parivar Pehchan Patra

The Maharashtra state government is planning to introduce identification cards, similar to Haryana's Parivar Pehchan Patra, which will allow citizens to access welfare services. The cards will feature universal numbers and data related to families, including information on domicile, birth and death certificates. The state cabinet is expected to roll out the scheme in the coming months, following the presentation of an expert committee's report to Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis. The scheme is expected to gather data on over 30 million families, with officials hoping for at least a 70% enrolment rate.

Mumbai: The state government is planning to roll out identification cards on the lines of Haryana’s Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP) under which people can avail of welfare services like domicile, birth and death certificates etc.

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The card will include universal numbers with data related to the families. The state cabinet is expected to roll it out in the next few months after the presentation of the expert committee to chief minister Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis.

After deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis decided to implement Parivar Pehchan Patra, under implementation in Haryana for the last two years, a team of senior officials led by revenue minister Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil a few months ago. The revenue department is now expected to make a presentation on it to CM and DyCM.

“The card will be a data of the information related to over 30 million families in the state and it will be verified by the machinery once it is provided by the families. The data will be utilised to provide the schemes and facilities to the families by retrieving the data from the system whenever the state and central government schemes are rolled out. Even services like domicile, birth and death can be issued by retrieving the data from the system. The idea is to reach out to the families without them expecting to make formal applications,” said an official from the revenue department.

The official said that they expect at least 70% of the families to enrol for the scheme. “We are a little sceptical about the response from the urban parts of the state owing to the high percentage of the floating population. The data has to be provided by the families voluntarily subject to verification by the government machinery. It will be comprehensive data related to the family, unlike the Aadhar number where limited information related to individuals is given in the system. There could be a number given to the families as their unique identification number,” he said.

As the first step towards the system, the state government has also begun the process of inviting bidding for the Unified Citizen Data Hub. “We have data of about 50% of families that take advantage of various government schemes. The UCDH will be a collection of data collected from various departments. It will help us while chalking or rolling out the new schemes,” said Ganesh Patil, director, of information and technology.

The revenue officer quoted above said that the UCDH will help them generate Parivar Pehchan Patra-like data of the families.