Gurugram: The variety of under poverty line (BPL) ration playing cards in Haryana had elevated by 12 lakh earlier than the 2024 Lok Sabha and meeting elections and dropped to pre-election ranges after, information supplied by the Nayab Saini authorities has revealed.

The info was tabled Monday by Meals, Civil Provides & Client Affairs Minister Rajesh Nagar on the penultimate day of the Haryana Meeting’s winter session in reply to a starred query by Rohtak’s Congress MLA Bharat Bhushan Batra.

A district-wise breakdown of the information by ThePrint revealed essentially the most dramatic surge in Faridabad in a yr, with ration playing cards going as much as 3.71 lakh in October 2024 from 2.72 lakh in October 2023. The quantity, nonetheless, was again to 2.64 lakh in October 2025.

Equally, in Hisar, the ration playing cards elevated from 2.99 lakh to three.63 lakh, earlier than dropping to 2.95 lakh in the identical interval. In Gurugram, the playing cards jumped from 1.65 lakh to 2.07 lakh, earlier than dipping to only 1.22 lakh—the sharpest fall in a yr.

Stating that stress-free the ration card eligibility standards from a month-to-month household earnings of Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 1.8 lakh in 2024 led to a rise in ration playing cards earlier than the elections, MLA Batra questioned the way it dropped in 2025, although the factors remained unchanged.

The Nayab Saini authorities responded, saying that the ration playing cards initially have been issued primarily based on self-declaration of incomes and that the quantity got here down after it began the earnings verification course of.

The Opposition, although, attacked the federal government for briefly offering ration card advantages for votes, with Chief of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda calling it the “greatest electoral manipulation” the state had witnessed.

Chatting with ThePrint, Hooda Tuesday mentioned, “The BJP authorities gave BPL standing to 2.13 crore of Haryana’s 2.8 crore individuals—simply to safe votes. They distributed free ration, like election bribes, and as soon as they gained, they snatched away the playing cards from over 11 lakh households. That is nothing however ‘vote chori’, stealing votes via deception.”

‘Beneficiaries not faux’

Every ration card, on common, is estimated to cowl 4 members of the family.

On Monday, a number of Congress legislators demanded a direct restoration of the cancelled ration playing cards throughout Zero Hour within the Haryana meeting.

MLA Batra, who raised the difficulty, mentioned atypical households have been now struggling to make ends meet after shedding entry to the free foodgrains that they had been receiving for months.

“These weren’t faux beneficiaries. These have been actual households whose eligibility the federal government itself licensed. In the event that they have been eligible in October 2024, why are they immediately ineligible in October 2025? The one factor that modified was that elections are over,” Batra mentioned, talking to The Print Tuesday.

The Haryana authorities has built-in a complete suite of welfare schemes for BPL and AAY cardholders, primarily via the Parivar Pehchan Patra system. Households with a yearly earnings under Rs 1.80 lakh are entitled to important meals safety, together with month-to-month rations of wheat and oil. In addition they get pleasure from a Rs 5 lakh cashless well being cowl underneath the Chirayu Haryana scheme.

Past fundamental wants, the state gives monetary cushions. These embody Rs 6,000 in annual advantages by way of Mukhya Mantri Parivar Samriddhi Yojana, housing restore with as much as Rs 80,000 grants underneath Dr B.R. Ambedkar Awas Navinikaran Yojana, and month-to-month social safety pensions of Rs 3,000 for eligible individuals.

(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)

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