The Telangana government is mulling a digital card for every family for ration, healthcare, and delivery of other welfare schemes.
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on Monday discussed the proposal with the officials of the Medical & Health and Civil Supplies Departments.
As states like Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka have already issued cards with comprehensive details of families, the Chief Minister suggested officials study the same. He asked officials to submit a comprehensive report after analysing the benefits of these cards and the challenges faced in the use of these cards for multiple services by the people.
Revanth Reddy asked officials to select one town and one village in every Assembly constituency and prepare an action plan for issuing family digital cards under a pilot project. He emphasised that the family digital cards should help the card holders avail all the welfare scheme benefits including healthcare, ration and other state-sponsored programmes.
The health profile of each family member will be included in the family digital card which will be useful to provide medical services to the family members in future.
The Chief Minister ordered the officials to provide an option to update the details of the family members mainly by addition and deletion of names of the family from time to time in the card and also set up a special mechanism at the district level monitoring the family digital cards.
Ministers N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, and Damodara Rajanarasimha, Chief Secretary Santhi Kumari, and senior officials were present. Last month, the Chief Minister had asked the officials of the Department of Medical and Health to study the policy of France to issue digital health cards to citizens. It was announced that the ration cards and health cards would be issued separately as the government decided to delink them.
