Karwar, 23 July

The Karnataka government has identified over 11.8 lakh potentially fraudulent beneficiaries of social security pensions across the State, including 13,702 income tax payers, 117 government employees as per preliminary findings, Revenue Minister Krishna Byre Gowda said.

Speaking at a review meeting on Wednesday, Gowda said Aadhaar verification also revealed thousands receiving old-age pensions despite not meeting the minimum age criteria. Furthermore, the government received complaints about able-bodied individuals availing disability pensions using forged certificates.

The Uttara Kannada district in-charge minister stated that steps will be taken at the government level to bring an end to such anomalies soon. In Uttara Kannada district alone, 11,956 such suspicious cases were flagged, including 351 income tax payers, he said.

Gowda also said that the State has launched a campaign to update outdated land records. Over 52.55 lakh land holdings still exist in the names of deceased farmers, rendering them ineligible for central schemes such as PM-Kisan. Officials have begun door-to-door campaigns to transfer ownership to legal heirs. In the past month alone, 20,000 such land title transfers have been completed.

In Uttara Kannada, 1.90 lakh land parcels remain in the names of 57,000 deceased farmers. Revenue officials have been directed to transfer these titles free of charge within six months.

The government is also fast-tracking digitisation under the Bhu Suraksha scheme to prevent record tampering. The Bhu-Suraksha Project was launched in 2024 with the goal of digitising and securing land records across the State.

Of the targeted 100 crore pages of land documents, 33.1 crore have been scanned, with a six-month deadline to complete the remaining. Citizens will be able to access digitised land records online, eliminating the need to visit taluk offices, Gowda said.