Shimla: A major irregularity has surfaced in Himachal Pradesh’s social security pension schemes, where thousands of beneficiaries were found to be either deceased or ineligible, yet payments continued to be released from the government treasury for years.
The revelation came during a high-level meeting held at the state secretariat, where officials reviewed the pension database through an app-based e-KYC process. During verification, 42,867 beneficiaries were flagged—37,335 were found dead, while 5,532 were declared ineligible, raising serious concerns over the failure of field-level verification for a long time.
Officials also informed that death records from 2016 onwards were examined through the Civil Registration System (CRS) portal, which revealed 4,52,779 death records, out of which 1,35,473 records were Aadhaar-seeded. Finance, Planning, Economics and Statistics Secretary Dr. Abhishek Jain directed immediate matching of all Aadhaar-linked death records with the e-KYC pension database to ensure timely removal of deceased beneficiaries.
So far, 2,378 beneficiaries have been removed from the pension schemes after CRS data verification. Rural Development and Health departments have sought more details, indicating that the number may rise further.
Dr. Jain expressed strong displeasure over the matter and said this is not merely a data correction issue. He stated that accountability will be fixed for officials and staff whose negligence allowed payments to continue in the names of dead and ineligible beneficiaries. A detailed inquiry has been ordered from the field level to district and directorate levels.
The government has also decided to tighten the verification process in future by strengthening e-KYC and CRS-based checks, along with improving field-level verification, to ensure that welfare benefits reach only eligible beneficiaries.
