Women and Child Department Explains Gruhalakshmi Payment Issues After CAG Findings
The Women and Child Development Department has clarified payment discrepancies highlighted in the CAG report, stating that most issues were caused by banking procedures and technical processes rather than duplicate benefit transfers.
Following the observations made in the Comptroller and Auditor General report on the Gruhalakshmi Scheme, the Karnataka Women and Child Development Department has issued a detailed clarification explaining the reasons behind the payment discrepancies. The department maintained that the benefit transfer system remains Aadhaar based and that several issues identified in the report were linked to banking and technical processes.
One of the key observations involved multiple beneficiaries appearing against a single bank account. According to the department, such cases may arise when eligible family members operate a joint account. For example, a mother and daughter or a mother in law and daughter in law may each qualify separately under the scheme while sharing the same bank account. In some instances, banks may also have transmitted incorrect account details because of technical errors in their core banking systems.
The department also addressed concerns regarding beneficiaries linked to multiple bank accounts. Officials explained that beneficiaries are free to change the Aadhaar linked account through the prescribed banking process. Once the new account is updated in the NPCI mapping system, future payments are redirected to the revised account. As a result, payments for different months may appear in different accounts, but the department clarified that no beneficiary receives the benefit in more than one account during the same payment cycle.
Another issue highlighted in the report involved transactions without visible bank account details. The department said that under the Aadhaar Based Payment System, account information is received from banks after transactions are processed. Temporary technical issues at the banking level may sometimes result in incomplete response files. In later payment cycles, however, the banks usually update the missing account information.
Officials further stated that all such cases have been examined through field level verification carried out by district and taluk authorities. The department said the review was aimed at ensuring transparency, correcting technical inconsistencies, and making sure that financial assistance reaches only eligible beneficiaries under the Gruhalakshmi Scheme.
