With the Congress attacking the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Jannayak Janta Party (BJP-JJP) coalition government over alleged flaws in the Parivar Pehchan Patra (PPP), Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday defended the ambitious programme saying PPP has a robust correction and grievance redressal mechanism through online portals.

Speaking on the calling attention motion tabled by the members of PPP during the monsoon session of the Haryana Assembly today, the CM said PPP draws from the digital infrastructure and principles created by Aadhaar.

He, however, said many times it is more complicated than Aadhar in its delivery as Aadhaar primarily keeps unique identity information whereas PPP goes far beyond to maintain socio-economic information besides unique identity information in the form of Aadhaar.

Khattar said Aadhaar took over six years to achieve mass scale and integration with schemes whereas PPP has been able to achieve it in over two years despite the Corona pandemic intervening in between.

The CM said PPP’s primary objective is to deliver welfare schemes and other services of the government at the doorstep of the beneficiary. He said it eliminates the need for submission of affidavits or documents for many schemes and services.

Khattar said the expansion of the delivery of public welfare schemes like benefit of subsidized rations under the Public Distribution System (PDS) to Below Poverty Line (BPL), pro-active benefit of Old Age Samman Allowance, Divyang Pension benefits, Mukhyamantri Vivah Shagun Yojana, Mukhyamantri Antyodaya Parivar Utthan Yojana etc have been made possible because of implementation of PPP.

The CM said over 9.67 lakh ration cards have been added since January 2022 benefitting a large section of the deserving population that was earlier being denied the benefits of PDS besides the elimination of a large number of ineligible beneficiaries.

He said the Old Age Samman Allowance benefits have been linked pro-actively to PPP. The verification process of all those in the age group of 59 to 70 are being identified including those who were left out in the earlier process and their consent is being sought for start of the allowance.

Khattar said in the current academic year 2023-24, 3.52 lakh fresh admissions have been made in private and government schools based on PPP data. Similarly, 1.28 lakh admissions have been made in colleges through the Online Admission Portal of the Department of Higher Education using PPP data.