Missing data gives headache to TS govt

Hyderabad: It is literally back to square one for the TRS government. Incomplete data collected during the Samagra Kutumba Survey (Integrated Household Survey) has cost the government dearly. The data is set aside for considering applications under social security and pension schemes. It may be recalled that the State government had conducted Samagra Kutumba Survey (SKS) on a single day on August 19 to weed out bogus beneficiaries.

The State government officials are working overtime to meet the December 10 deadline to disburse pensions. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, during an interaction with District Collectors on December 1, said they should consider fresh applications, if the names were missing in the data.

The gathered data was fed into servers of National Informatics Centre under the SKS module. Tata Consultancy Services was roped in to create pension software for identifying the beneficiaries and disburse pensions. Software professionals found that the data was irregular as information and data entry were not properly validated before they were entered into the SKS module.

Also, changes in the eligibility norms for old-age pension effected by the government also led to delay in finalising the data. Sources said that in some cases, a 10-year-old was shown as eligible for old-age pension though his details on Sadaram software revealed that he was physically disabled. The pension software rejected some of the disabled persons as several persons shared same IDs from different mandals. It is estimated that as many as 25 lakh pensioners would be eligible for pensions and efforts are being made to verify 1.5 lakh persons. Some of them had availed pensions in November and December.