The Bengal administration will assist people in filling out application forms for various schemes funded by central and state governments at the Jana Kalyan Shivirs to be held between June 15 and 17.

Sources in the state government said that the camps — envisaged on the lines of Duare Sarkar camps by the Mamata Banerjee dispensation — would help eligible beneficiaries fill out the application forms for Annapurna Yojana, PM Vishwakarma Yojana, Ayushman Bharat or PM-Kisan schemes.

“This is the first initiative by the new government to reach out to common people on their doorsteps. The previous government did not allow many of the central government schemes here. The new BJP government has announced that it will implement all central government schemes, but people need assistance to fill in the forms, which are new for them,” said a senior official.

According to the plan, there will be one camp for every seven gram panchayats and one camp for 10 wards in municipal areas. In municipal corporation areas, there will be one camp for each borough.

The district magistrates were asked to deploy an adequate number of trained volunteers who would help people visiting the camps fill in the forms. “The forms could be filled in both online and offline. The authorities should arrange enough laptops or desktops in the camps,” said another official.

According to sources, the initiative to help beneficiaries fill in forms was the need of the hour as complaints were coming up that beneficiaries of Lakshmir Bhandar were finding it difficult to fill out the 12-page form for Annapurna Yojana.

“Helping the beneficiaries fill out the forms for Annapurna Yojana is important for the new government, as it had earlier announced that beneficiaries of Lakshmir Bhandar would be shifted to the new scheme. But later on, the government launched the 12-page form after it found several irregularities in the list of beneficiaries of Lakshmir Bhandar. Now, if a large number of beneficiaries cannot be included in the list of beneficiaries because they failed to fill out the form, it would leave the new government in an uncomfortable situation,” said a source.

Not only the Annapurna Yojana, but also people who wish to apply for other schemes would require assistance because the schemes are new to Bengal.

The DMs have been asked that if any of the visitors to the camp could not be helped to fill out the forms, the authorities should get in touch with those persons later on and help them. “For this, the phone numbers of such visitors would have to be collected by the volunteers for contacting them in future,” said an official.

The DMs have also been asked to ensure that the documents submitted at the camps are verified properly before adding the applicants to the list of beneficiaries to avoid errors in future.

“The state government does not want to face any kind of problems in future like the previous government. This is why it has laid stress on verifying documents submitted in the camps before transferring benefits to the applicants,” said a source, adding that more than 30 lakh ineligible beneficiaries were found in the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme only because the previous government did not verify the documents submitted in the Duare Sarkar camps.