В Гуджарате из-за технических сбоев Aadhaar не получили выплаты по 1,53 млн заявкам на материнскую помощь

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat’s maternity assistance system is facing a significant digital bottleneck, with official government data showing that over 1.5 lakh applicants registered on the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY) portal have not received benefits because of Aadhaar-related technical barriers. The figures, placed before the Lok Sabha on August 7, 2026, show that 93,572 beneficiaries in the state were unable to receive benefits because their Aadhaar was not mapped with NPCI, while another 60,108 faced unsuccessful Aadhaar biometric or facial authentication with UIDAI. The two categories together account for 1,53,680 technical cases, although the parliamentary reply does not clarify whether there is any overlap between the two beneficiary groups. Meanwhile, Gujarat recorded 75,437 rejected PMMVY installments between FY24 and August 5, 2026, with rejections peaking sharply at 51,520 in FY25, according to Lok Sabha data. Across India, 6,13,633 beneficiaries faced Aadhaar-NPCI mapping problems and 5,29,554 faced biometric authentication failures, placing Gujarat among the states with a substantial number of beneficiaries caught in the digital verification pipeline. 75,437 rejections in less than four years Gujarat’s PMMVY application data showed significant fluctuations in rejection numbers. Between FY24 and August 5, 2026, Gujarat recorded a total of 12,64,021 applied installments , while 11,25,958 were approved. During the same period, 75,437 installments were recorded as rejected, based on the year-wise figures placed in the Lok Sabha. In FY24, the state recorded 4,55,206 applied installments, 1,81,251 approvals and 4,877 rejections. However, in FY25, while applied installments fell to 3,11,383, the number of rejected installments jumped more than tenfold to 51,520. The rejection numbers later declined. In FY26, Gujarat recorded 3,47,540 applied installments, 2,85,971 approvals and 13,755 rejections. In FY27, up to August 5, 2026, the state recorded 1,49,892 applied installments, 1,99,259 approvals and 5,285 rejections. The government has clarified that the approval figures may include installments applied for in previous financial years, meaning the annual approval and application numbers should not be treated as a direct same-year beneficiary conversion rate. What is driving the rejections? The Ministry of Women and Child Development said PMMVY applications can be rejected for reasons including ineligibility under scheme guidelines, incorrect uploaded documents such as MCH/RCH cards or eligibility documents, and cases where the applicant has already availed the full PMMVY benefit. However, the more critical Gujarat issue emerging from the data is not merely rejection but the separate pool of beneficiaries already entered into the PMMVY system who remain without payment because of Aadhaar-linked technical failures. The 75,437 rejected installments and the 1,53,680 beneficiaries facing Aadhaar-NPCI or biometric authentication barriers are separate data categories and should not be added together as unique affected women. Digital exclusion risk The ministry shifted PMMVY implementation from the old PMMVY-CAS software to the new PMMVY system from April 1, 2023. The new system was designed as a paperless platform, while payments are routed through the Aadhaar Bridge Payment System and identity verification can involve Aadhaar-based biometric authentication through facial recognition. The government said it has introduced several safeguards, including application tracking, grievance redressal, a multilingual helpline, SMS alerts and monitoring systems down to the Anganwadi level. The ministry has also said Aadhaar verification and DBT enablement are checked during registration to speed up processing. Yet Gujarat’s numbers underline the continuing gap between digital registration and successful benefit delivery. For more than 1.53 lakh Gujarat beneficiaries listed in the official technical-failure categories, entry into the system did not automatically translate into receipt of maternity benefits. The central data does not provide a year-wise breakup for this group because beneficiaries can leave the pending list after Aadhaar-NPCI mapping is completed or biometric authentication succeeds. The central government said it is regularly monitoring pendency clearance, fund utilisation and implementation through video conferences and digital monitoring systems, while PMMVY funds are now released through a Just-in-Time framework under the SNA-SPARSH mechanism. But the Gujarat figures raise a critical delivery question: How quickly are women whose maternity benefits are blocked by Aadhaar mapping and authentication failures being brought back into the payment system? The Lok Sabha data provides the size of the technical barrier, but it does not provide a Gujarat-specific assessment of how many otherwise eligible women may have been excluded from benefits for prolonged periods because of digital failures.