Gujarat: CAG points out ‘persisting deficiencies’ in implementation of social assistance schemes through DBT

The report drew instances of two specific districts — Bharuch and Dang — where “774 impoverished and widowed beneficiaries of the Indira Gandhi National Widow Pension Scheme (IGNWPS) were excluded from the NFBS, resulting in a loss of Rs 1.55 crore in benefits between 2017 and 2021”.

Citing the cases of Bharuch and Dang, the CAG report clearly pointed out the responsibility of exclusion on Mamlatdars as implementing agencies. “Information provided by Jhagadia Mamlatdar office (Bharuch district) revealed that from 2017 to 2019, a total of 201 widows had applied for and started receiving Widow Pension under IGNWPS. However, none of them had applied for or received the one-time financial assistance of Rs 20,000 available under the NFBS (National Family Benefit Scheme) during the same period. Similarly, in another Mamlatdar office in Ahwa (Dang district), 721 widows were found to be included under IGNWPS from 2017 to 2020. However, only 75 of them availed of the benefits of NFBS during that period. The 774 beneficiaries, thus, missed out on a total of Rs 1.55 crore worth of benefits under the NFBS during 2017-20,” the report has stressed.

“Evidently, the poor and widowed beneficiaries were deprived of the benefits of NFBS because the Mamlatdars as the Implementing Agencies failed to educate them about the existence and availability of benefits under NFBS when they came to apply for IGNWPS. This lack of awareness and indifference on the part of the Implementing Agencies violated the spirit and objectives of the NSAP (National Social Assistance Programme) Guidelines that denied the beneficiaries their legitimate entitlements..Except National Food Security Act, the Implementing Agencies did not share NSAP beneficiary data with the Implementing Agencies of other Schemes for convergence purposes. None of the 36 selected Gram Panchayats/Wards conducted Social Audits of NSAP during the period 2017-21,” it further pointed out.

The Performance Audit, conducted in two phases between May 2020 and March 2021 and again between July 2021 and September 2021, to examine the implementation of all four components of the NSAP (IGNOAPS, IGNWPS, IGNDPS and NFBS), being implemented through DBT mode, for the period from 2017-18 to 2020-21 further revealed that the Gujarat government did not maintain any database for eligible beneficiaries. As a result, NSAP implementation in the state primarily relied on a demand-driven approach, where benefits were solely accessible to those beneficiaries who were aware of the programme and actively applied for assistance, it stated.

Since December 2020, the process of application, verification, registration and sanction of financial assistance to the beneficiaries is being done through the ‘Digital Gujarat Portal’ , which is directly linked with the NSAP Portal.

The NSAP seeks to provide financial support to the elderlies, widows, disabled, and bereaved families on the death of their primary breadwinner, belonging to Below Poverty Line (BPL) households. The NSAP has five sub-schemes as its components. Of the five components, three are Pension Schemes — Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme (IGNOAPS), IGNWPS, and Indira Gandhi National Disability Pension Scheme (IGNDPS).

“The State Government did not constitute Special Verification Teams to conduct annual verification of existing beneficiaries to confirm their eligibility for social assistance programmes under NSAP. Despite identifying 1,072 beneficiaries as discontinued due to factors such as death or moving above the poverty line, these beneficiaries continued to receive pension payments. A total of Rs 32.60 lakh was disbursed to these discontinued beneficiaries during 2017-21,” the report also stated.

“Conversely, in cases where migration could have been beneficial and necessary, no migration occurred, resulting in a financial loss of Rs 150 to Rs 500 per month per beneficiary to a total of 270 beneficiaries during 2017-21. ..Against the NSAP Guidelines, the State Government failed to provide a matching grant of Rs 20,000 for the NFBS, resulting in 27,801 registered beneficiaries in the State being deprived of a total benefit of Rs 55.60 crore during 2017-21. The GoI did not allocate any grant to the State Government for the IGNWPS from 2017 to 2020 due to various non-compliance issues. As a consequence, the State Government not only missed out on receiving the rightful funds from the GoI but also incurred an additional financial burden of Rs 179.30 crore during the period 2017-21,” the CAG report found out.

In Gujarat, the Social Justice and Empowerment Department (SJED) oversees the implementation of three components of the NSAP — IGNOAPS, IGNDPS and NFBS. Additionally, the Women and Child Development Department is responsible for the implementation of IGNWPS. These four components are being implemented through DBT mode.

The audit involved scrutiny of data retrieved from the NSAP portal of the government of India, the data dump of NSAP restricted to four aforesaid components and examination of records of the State DBT Cell, the Director, Social Defence and WCD Commissioner.

The CAG report also highlighted ‘significant delay’ in the distribution of pension payments to 3,820 beneficiaries across the three components of the NSAP (IGNOAPS, IGNWPS and IGNDPS), ranging from one to 38 months beyond the scheduled effective date. “This delay collectively resulted in a financial loss, amounting to Rs 1.81 crore for these 3,820 beneficiaries. The failure of Implementing Agencies to take effective follow-up action on failed transactions led to the suspension of pension payments totalling Rs 1.57 crore for 4,978 beneficiaries, ranging from one month to over 24 months between 2017 and 2021. Beneficiaries were shifted to different components, even when the original component was more beneficial, causing a collective pension loss of Rs 25.04 lakh for 380 beneficiaries throughout 2017-2021’, it highlights.

Listing possible reasons for deficiencies, the CAG report also stated, “Despite an overall effective control mechanism and well-implemented IT systems, the audit examination identified several persisting deficiencies. The analysis for the period 2017-21 revealed a number of duplicate Pension Accounts across three Pension components of NSAP (IGNDPS, IGNOAPS and IGNWPS) within the State as well as in nine selected districts. Notably, online claim form for assistance under the NFBS did not include a dedicated section to input the age of the deceased individual, even though the age of the deceased was a vital criterion for determining eligibility. None of the 27 designated Implementing Agencies maintained any documentation or reports regarding the annual verification of beneficiaries’ eligibility status. Furthermore, no Life Certificates from beneficiaries were of the eligible beneficiaries found to have been uploaded onto the NSAP portal during the same period,”

In order to overcome these, the CAG also has a few recommendations, including establishing a centralised and comprehensive database of eligible beneficiaries for NSAP in the state to ensure that deserving beneficiaries are not excluded from the programme, awareness campaigns to inform potential beneficiaries about the availability and eligibility criteria of NSAP schemes, encouraging greater participation and coverage.

“The State Government may implement more robust processes for verifying and maintaining beneficiary account information, enhancing communication between the Implementing Agencies and beneficiaries, to keep the accounts active, strengthen the oversight and monitoring mechanisms to ensure that migration decisions are well-informed, transparent and aligned with the best interests of the beneficiaries, reassess the applications of beneficiaries who were previously denied benefits under the Scheme due to unjustified rejections, responsibility may be fixed for the officials responsible for the erroneous rejections, facilitate enhanced coordination and synergy between various Government Schemes, the NSAP beneficiary data may be shared with other implementing agencies of different Departments,” the CAG report suggested, adding that this approach would enable effective convergence, allowing identified vulnerable beneficiaries to access benefits from multiple state and central schemes.