New norms may see a drop in Amma Vodi beneficiaries

Tirupati: The number of Amma Vodi beneficiaries is expected to drop significantly this time as the government has been filtering the applications following various parameters and decided to remove the ineligible students from the list. Though officials are not in a position to tell exactly the number of beneficiaries to be filtered out this year, the ward/village secretariat staff were entrusted with the job of scrutinising the applications rigorously in their limits.

The YSRCP government's flagship programme Amma Vodi was designed to incentivise mothers to prevent the dropout rate. Students from Class I to Intermediate, of both public and private colleges, are eligible for the scheme. It was launched on January 9, 2020 and the government has been transferring the amount to the accounts of mothers of beneficiary students for the last two years.

Under the scheme, financial assistance of Rs 15,000 is given to each mother whose children are studying Classes I to Intermediate. However, the government asked the mothers to pay Rs 1,000 for sanitation maintenance in schools and paying them the remaining Rs 14,000. From this year onwards, it is learnt that the beneficiaries will be paid only Rs 13,000 as another Rs 1,000 will be deducted in the name of school maintenance expenditure.

But this time, the government imposed new guidelines due to which several beneficiaries may become ineligible. It was learnt that the government directed the staff concerned to remove those beneficiaries whose power consumption exceeds 300 units a month by checking the consumption during the last six months. Also, some other factors like having own land, four-wheeler, having any government employee in the family, etc., will be taken into consideration.

The names in the ration cards will also be checked. The beneficiaries were asked to complete e-KYC with ward/village volunteers and in the process, several mothers are being made ineligible citing different technical reasons.

For this, a mobile application was also developed. The government is learnt to have asked the headmasters to finalise the list of eligible students with the help of ward/village secretaries.

The parents are questioning the motive behind removal of some names this time though they were eligible in the previous year. According to the officials, in Tirupati district there are 3,063 schools under various managements in which 3,08,237 students are studying. Out of them 1,89,084 students were identified as beneficiaries during 2020-21 and an amount of Rs 258.35 crore was transferred into their mothers' accounts. Now, it has to be seen how many beneficiaries will be removed from the previous year now.