Bhubaneswar, Nov. 2: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation’s council has decided to constitute a special squad to find out how bogus beneficiaries were taking advantage of the pension schemes sponsored by state and central governments. The corporation has so far identified 2,286 such bogus beneficiaries.

The Telegraph had, on October 14, carried a report on how smart cards, issued by the corporation had helped weed out fake beneficiaries. Following the report, BMC councillors had sought intervention of higher authorities to identify those responsible for such irregularities.

Councillor of ward No. 2 Sanjay Kumar Sethi said: “Not all pension beneficiaries have been issued biometric cards. While there are nearly 11,000 beneficiaries covered under various pension and welfare schemes, about 6,000 of them have been given smart cards.”

Demanding inclusion of all beneficiaries under the smart card coverage, Sethi urged the council to take urgent steps in this regard.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena assured the council that it had been decided to ask the agency, providing the smart card service, to include all beneficiaries at the earliest opportunity, so that there would be no distribution of money through two systems. In future, pension will be distributed only through smart cards.

“We have decided to form a squad with the corporation’s officials to check the identity of every individual coming for inclusion of their names in the biometric card. The entire process will be videographed. If any discrepancies occur, the video clippings can be analysed to verify the beneficiaries,’’ said the mayor.

While many officials of the corporation have welcomed the move saying the findings would also expose involvement of many insiders in having fake names inserted in the list of beneficiaries, some have been saying that the projection of such a large number of fake beneficiaries could not be a practical reality.

However, an official, who did not want to be named, said: “There are instances where a single person was found receiving pension from three centres. If everything was running smoothly and the norms of the pension booklets were followed properly, then how several dead persons continued to draw pensions till last year?’’

“The system of biometric card was planned to ensure authenticity as it uses fingerprint. Fingerprint is always unique as every person has got his/her own specific finger mark, which is different from others,’’ he said.

The corporation started the biometric card exercise last year. The smart cards were introduced not only in the pension distribution process, but also for having bank accounts to ensure safe deposition of their money.

The biometric smart cards carry scanned digital images of the fingerprints of the users, so that when the user tries to use it in more than one place, then the transaction can be detected by the software installed in the computer network.