Major Action Taken Against Wrongful Payments in Mahtari Vandan Yojana

Raipur, December 23

Mahtari Vandan Yojana is an ambitious scheme of Chhattisgarh state. The scheme is being implemented with the objective of eliminating gender discrimination and inequality against women in the state, bringing about continuous improvement in health and nutrition levels, promoting economic self-reliance and empowerment, and strengthening their role in decision-making in the family.

The Women and Child Development Department is working vigilantly to ensure that the scheme is implemented transparently in the state and only eligible women beneficiaries receive the benefits of the scheme. And in cases where fake applications have been made to take undue advantage of the scheme, strict action is being taken immediately upon receiving information.

The information circulated through social media, in which news of the amount of Mahtari Vandan Yojana being deposited in Sunny Leone’s account has been circulated, is not correct.

In fact, no amount of Mahtari Vandan has been paid to Sunny Leone’s bank account, but this is an act done by a person named Virendra Kumar Joshi to illegally obtain government funds by colluding at the local level and applying in the name of Sunny Leone by providing his own Aadhaar and other information.

In fact, Virendra Kumar Joshi, by committing fraud in the Anganwadi Center Talur of Bastar Development Block of Bastar district, applied in the name of Sunny Leone through the Anganwadi Center worker of Talur and entered his own Aadhaar number and bank account details as other information in that application.

The responsibility for examining and verifying each application was to be performed by the committee formed at the village level, which included the village in-charge/ward in-charge and the Anganwadi worker. Thereafter, the documents marked in the portal were to be verified for the first verification by the Anganwadi worker and for the second verification by the supervisor and approved by the project officer. In this case, Anganwadi worker Vedmati Joshi, who is a neighbor of Virendra Kumar Joshi, verified the application made by Virendra Kumar Joshi in the name of Sunny Leone on the online portal without verifying the facts. Similarly, the supervisor also verified this application without verification, due to which the beneficiary with a fake name was paid the amount in the form of DBT to the State Bank account linked with the Aadhaar number provided by him.
For this serious negligence, the concerned Anganwadi worker Vedmati Joshi has been dismissed. Supervisor Smt. Prabha Netam and Project Officer Smt. Jyoti Mathrani have been suspended and the then District Program Officer has also been issued a show-cause notice. Also, an FIR has been registered against Virendra Kumar Joshi and he has been arrested and his bank account has been seized and action is being taken to recover the amount paid.
The government intends that eligible mothers should benefit from the scheme, therefore, all eligible beneficiary applicants have been included in the scheme. Detailed provisions have been made for the implementation of the scheme, in which separate IDs/passwords were provided to each field staff while developing online software for receiving applications under the scheme. Similarly, the concerned Anganwadi worker was also provided with an ID/password. After receiving applications from the beneficiaries in the prescribed format under the scheme, the Anganwadi worker and the village in-charge entered the applications in the online portal and uploaded the attached documents after examining the documents.
The provision was made to verify the applications entered in the software at the first level through the village committee and thereafter by the Anganwadi worker, and thereafter the responsibility of conducting the second verification was fixed for the concerned sector supervisor so that there could be two-level verification. After verification, the provisional list was published at the ward/panchayat level and this list was pasted at public places like Anganwadi center, Gram Panchayat, etc. and the villagers were given an opportunity to examine this list and file a claim against those who made false applications.
A provision has been made to resolve the claims received at the Child Development Project level, and more than 12,000 wrong applications have been rejected after receiving claims. After the disposal of the claims, the final list was published and published. Even after determining the above processes, in order to prevent such fake applications from being received, field staff were continuously given directions to verify them and about 15,000 wrong applications were identified and rejected.
The final list of 70,26,352 applicants has also been verified at the state level with various available data and sent to UIDAI for Aadhaar authentication and Aadhaar verification. Therefore, the statement that 50% of the applicants are fake is completely wrong. The department has continuously identified and removed more than 15,000 wrong beneficiaries from the beneficiary list by verifying at the field level from time to time and also through software. The list of beneficiaries is reflected on the ID of each Anganwadi center.
The Mahtari Vandan Yojana has benefited the mothers of the state immensely, such as the use of this amount by mothers for the health and nutrition of children and themselves, saving and depositing in Sukanya Samriddhi accounts in the name of daughters, spending on children’s education, meeting their daily needs and starting their own business, which are many examples of women empowerment.
Sufficient security measures have been taken while implementing the Mahtari Vandan Yojana. While implementing the process, the application was filled by the Anganwadi worker and the village/ward in-charge on the online portal along with all the documents after receiving the application at the level of the Anganwadi worker and the village/ward in-charge. A provision was also kept for online application by the applicants themselves. The department is continuously taking information about the authenticity of the beneficiaries at every level. Instructions have been issued from time to time. As a result, information about deceased beneficiaries is also being taken and they are being removed from the beneficiary list, and as of now, more than 21,000 beneficiaries have been removed from the beneficiary list due to death. Thus, the department is continuously taking action with promptness to implement the scheme.