In a major clean-up of welfare records, the Haryana government has cancelled around 2.75 lakh Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards in the last month. This step reduced the total number of BPL cardholders from 51.97 lakh in April to 49.22 lakh — a drop of nearly 5%.
According to the state’s Food, Civil Supplies, and Consumer Affairs Department, the move was based on Aadhaar-enabled data. Officials said the deletions targeted families who had not taken ration for over a year. “These cards appeared inactive, so we removed them from the BPL list,” said one official. The cancelled BPL cards have been changed to regular ration cards, meaning those families will no longer get BPL-specific benefits.
This comes after concerns that BPL numbers were unusually high. In November, nearly 70% of Haryana’s population was marked as BPL — a figure officials said was unrealistic.
The district most affected by the drive was Faridabad, where 18,200 cards were cancelled. Other districts with large numbers of cancellations include Hisar (16,776), Sirsa (15,369), and Karnal (15,026). These were also among the districts with the highest BPL enrolment earlier.
On the other hand, Panchkula had the fewest BPL ration cards (87,150), followed by Charkhi Dadri, Rewari, Jhajjar, Mahendragarh, and Gurugram.
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