Wrong caste, inflated income: How Haryana’s family ID scheme has become a poll issue

At Badopatti village on the Hisar-Ambala National Highway, Rohtas Guri talks about how he had to spend three-four days just to get details in his ‘Parivar Pehchan Patra’ corrected.

“I am from the Kumhar community, but in the family ID, the caste of two of my three children was mentioned as Chamar. I lost earnings of three-four days making the rounds of offices to get this corrected,” says Guri, who works as a carpenter.

Before that, the 45-year-old says, he had to similarly approach different officials to correct his family income to Rs 1.4 lakh annually, from Rs 2 lakh. Only those families with an annual income of Rs 1.8 lakh or less can avail several welfare schemes in the state, such as 2 litres of mustard oil monthly.

While Guri remains a “BJP supporter”, the ambitious Parivar Pehchan Patra of the BJP government in Haryana in 2020 is a contentious issue and now one of the main planks of the opposition Congress.

Under the scheme, launched by then Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the 54-lakh odd families in Haryana were to get a unique eight-digit identification number each, to ease distribution of social security schemes and their monitoring by the state government. It was made mandatory for all families to register on the Parivar Pehchan Patra portal, with state employees warned that their salaries could be withheld if they failed to do so.

The Congress opposed the family ID plan right from the start, dubbing it ‘Permanent Pareshani (Harassment) Patra’, and calling it a violation of the right to privacy. With public complaints suggesting a high rate of inaccuracy in family IDs, the party promised as far back as 2023 that the Congress would scrap the scheme if voted to power in the Assembly polls later this year.

Congres