Pune: A day after the state govt announced a helpline to resolve e-KYC-related problems under the Ladki Bahin scheme, several beneficiaries said the move did not address their primary concern — reopening the portal to allow corrections in applications.Women and child development minister Aditi Tatkare, in a post on X on Friday night, said beneficiaries could contact the helpline number 181 for immediate assistance regarding e-KYC errors, delayed payments, and other scheme-related queries. However, many women TOI spoke to on Saturday said the helpline was either not operational, or ineffective in rectifying incorrect entries.“Despite trying several times, the helpline number announced yesterday was not answered. This is not going to be the solution. The portal should be reopened so that we can re-submit or correct our applications,” a beneficiary from Pune said.Another woman from rural Pune, Lata K, said repeated attempts to contact the helpline were unsuccessful. “We tried calling 10 to 12 times. It is the National Women Helpline, and it showed continuously busy. This helpline will not help. There should be dedicated officials in every district to address our concerns,” she said.The e-KYC portal closed for updates on Dec 31 and after that, women were directed to anganwadi workers for corrections.“We do not want to go through anganwadi workers to re-submit e-KYC. We should have the option to do it ourselves,” a beneficiary from Thane said.In her statement on X, Tatkare said the department received complaints about benefits being suspended because of women selecting incorrect options during e-KYC. “To redress these complaints and doubts related to the scheme, assistance was provided on the women’s helpline number 181. The call operators were trained, and all complaints will be resolved through this helpline,” she said, urging beneficiaries to avail of the service.A senior women and child development department official said a wrongly framed question in the Marathi e-KYC form resulted in more than 24 lakh beneficiaries being wrongly classified as belonging to families of govt employees, leading to the suspension of their monthly financial assistance of Rs 1,500.The question, “Tumchya gharatle koni sarkari nokrit nahi na?”, used double negatives, confusing respondents. Beneficiaries who should have answered “no” marked “yes”, the official said.The error came to light during a data review, officials said, adding Maharashtra has only eight-nine lakh govt employees, including those in semi-govt bodies and corporations. The govt has since deployed nearly one lakh anganwadi workers across Maharashtra to physically verify affected beneficiaries and correct records.The e-KYC exercise covered around 2.3 crore beneficiaries of Mukhyamantri – Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana, with the state disbursing nearly Rs 3,700 crore every month.
