The district administration recently removed the names of beneficiaries of government schemes, who were no longer alive yet were receiving allowances like old-age pension, widow pension, disability pension, etc., since the families concerned had not submitted the death certificates.
The records of the last five years were looked into, and the initiative has resulted in a saving of around ₹41.3 lakh a month, which comes to over ₹4.95 crore annually.
“During the drive, we succeeded in identifying around 9,600 such people, who had died, yet the funds or rations were being allocated for them. After identification, we removed their names from the list of beneficiaries, helping us save ₹41.3 lakh every month,” said Sanjay Shettannavar, Deputy Commissioner.
He said the drive was launched between August 8 and September 24, during which a detailed list was collected from different departments, and documents were scrutinised to find out the dead beneficiaries.
Mr. Shettannavar said the drive was conducted with the help of 219 village accountants in 684 villages of the district.
He said notices would be served to family members who have wrongly taken money despite knowing that the actual beneficiary was no longer alive. “We are trying to recover the money from them and hopefully we will be able to recover it and put it back in the government account,” he said.
The official also said, besides weeding out dead beneficiaries, the district administration has succeeded in removing 12,472 voters from the voters’ list as they have died. He said in the coming days, such drives would be conducted to save more public money by removing ineligible beneficiaries.