In yet another blatant example of misuse of the online portal system to fudge documents, several cases of registration of marriage based on forged records of the family IDs have been detected in Hisar district in an attempt to fraudulently usurp the benefits of the Mukya Mantri Vivah Shagun Yogna of the Welfare Department and other government schemes meant for the Below Poverty Line (BPL) families.
The sources revealed that there are several cases that have come to light in Hisar district in which the marriages were registered after authentication in online mode instead of physical appearance. The officials who detected the fraud suspected that there might be a racket involved in it, which seems to have an inter-district network to perpetrate fraud in the government schemes. The officials have brought the matter to the Deputy Commissioner of Hisar, who is probing the matter, say the officials.
According to information, an official suspected a sudden rise in the registration of marriages in the district. On being observed the documents which were uploaded on the SARAL portal which is a unified online citizen service platform to provide residents with easy access to government schemes and services through a single digital window system, the official found that there was a pattern in these registration in which the one of the bride or groom was from Barwala sub division in Hisar district and another party was from Sonepat district and all the marriage registrations were done by authentication of Parivar Pahchan Patra (PPP) which is also known as Family ID.
However, when some of these cases were cross-checked from the data of the Citizen Resources Information Department (CRID), it revealed that the PPPs of the persons in these cases belong to Sonepat, Sirsa and Yamunanagar districts even though the PPPs of one of the parties (bride or groom) was shown as of Barwala subdivision in Hisar district. In some cases, the applicants for marriage registration were found to be already married and even having children.
The CRID compiles the PPP data and provides access to this data to other departments to avail the benefits of the government schemes to the beneficiaries of BPL.
The officials concluded that the fraudsters had registered the data by changing their home district and making other amendments in their respective PPPs to get the benefit of the Vivah Shagun Yojna. This scheme provides benefits of Rs 71,000 to the marriage of a girl from a BPL family of the Scheduled caste, Rs 51 thousand for a girl from a non-BPL family of a widow or a divorce women and Rs 41000 for the marriage of a girl from other communities having a family income lower than Rs 1.8 lakh per annum.
Notably, a case of use of a “rubber thumb impression” by an Aadhaar computer operator during Aadhaar authentication procedures, wherein the authorised user’s login by way of thumb impression was being used by unauthorised persons for logging in, was also found in Hisar. This case was also being probed by the authorities.
An identical matter of tampering in the PPP documents by unauthorised access to the portal was also exposed in Jhajjar district last year. In this case, about 12 thousand cases of submitting fake divorce certifications to manipulate income records and get their separate family IDs created just to get the benefits of various schemes under the BPL category. When contacted, Hisar DC Mahender Pal did not take calls for his version on the matter.
