The Centre has wrongly claimed that 39.28 crore poor people have received financial assistance of ₹34,800 under its Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan package so far. A fact check shows that the correct figure is 33.71 crore beneficiaries.
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A Finance Ministry statement explaining the break-up of the assistance showed that the figure included 20.05 crore women who hold the Jan Dhan Yojana bank accounts and have received the first instalment of ₹500 each, as well as 5.57 crore who have received the second instalment as well.
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When The Hindu pointed out that the women who received the second instalment also received the first and cannot be counted as a separate set of beneficiaries, a Finance Ministry spokesperson confirmed that the calculation was faulty, and that the correct figure should be 33.7 crore. However, the Ministry’s official statement was left uncorrected, at least until the time of publication of this report.
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The spokesperson later said “approximately 7 crore beneficiaries” under the Ujjwala scheme have not been included in the statement, claiming that the count could be somewhat higher. However, none of these changes have been made in the official statement.
The Finance Ministry count of 39 crore poor people also fails to take into account the fact there are likely overlaps between the groups of beneficiaries. The women Jan Dhan account holders may also be pensioners, construction workers or farmers, who have all benefited under the cash transfer scheme, but are being counted separately for the purposes of the Ministry’s beneficiary count.
