Revanth moots multi-purpose digital cards for families

The Telangana government will introduce multi-purpose digital cards soon for every family in the state, seeking to provide the benefits of various welfare schemes, including medical care services, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The proposal came up for discussion during a review meeting conducted by chief minister A Revanth Reddy at his residence on Monday evening. Senior officials from the medical and health department and civil supplies department attended the meeting.

Revanth said: “The ‘one state-one digital card’ system has already been in vogue in Rajasthan, Haryana and Karnataka. The officials concerned need to study the scheme being implemented in these states and the benefits being accrued to the people.”

He asked them to submit a comprehensive report, explaining the benefits and also challenges in the use of digital cards for multiple services by the people.

Revanth Reddy suggested that the scheme be tested on a pilot basis before being implemented all over the state. He asked the officials to select a town and a village in each assembly constituency and prepare an action plan for issuing the family digital card as a pilot project.

The chief minister emphasised that the family digital cards should help the card holders to avail all the welfare scheme benefits including medical care, ration and other state sponsored programmes. The health profile of each family member will be included in the family digital card which is useful to provide medical services to the family members in the future.

He 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 for system monitoring of the family digital cards.