Scheme launched to digitally store vital documents of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes | Bengaluru News
Bengaluru: In a move to empower SC and ST communities by safeguarding their access to welfare schemes, the govt has launched its flagship ‘Nanna Guruthu’ (My Identity) initiative in two gram panchayats — Huskur in Bengaluru Urban and Biligiriranganabetta in Chamarajanagar — as pilot locations.The rural development and panchayat raj (RDPR) and social welfare departments, which will jointly implement the initiative, aim to collect and securely store 13 essential govt documents in DigiLocker for every SC and ST beneficiary. These include Aadhaar, caste and income certificates, ration card, voter ID, pensions, Ayushman Bharat Health ID, and MGNREGA job cards, among others.“Nanna Guruthu will be implemented in Kalyana Karnataka gram panchayats based on learnings from the pilot project,” said Priyank Kharge, RDPR minister.Announced in the 2024-25 state budget, the project is designed to streamline access of SC and ST families to welfare schemes by eliminating document-related barriers. After the pilot phase, the scheme will be scaled up to 1,137 gram panchayats across seven districts in Kalyana Karnataka region.The e-governance department had conducted online training sessions in Nov for RDPR staff and volunteers on the DigiLocker app. Since Aadhaar and mobile numbers are mandatory for registration, a door-to-door survey was conducted to gather names, Aadhaar details, and mobile numbers of all SC/ST residents in the two pilot panchayats.Officials say Biligiriranganabetta GP houses 82 SC and 1,732 ST individuals, while Huskur GP has 2,108 SC and 257 ST members. Officials will help residents collect, retrieve, and update the required documents.“If anyone loses their documents, the department concerned will provide documents. We will also help people update information in their documents,” said an official.The scale of the task is significant. In Biligiriranganabetta GP, the target is to digitise 17,549 documents, of which 12,736 have already been uploaded. In Huskur GP, 14,517 of the targeted 18,246 documents have been secured.“Since the initiative is being implemented for SCs and STs, a request has been sent to the social welfare department to release Rs 16 crore from SCSP/TSP grant action plan for the year 2025-26,” said the official.RDPR department has also written to all zilla panchayat chief executive officers, instructing them to prepare for expanding the initiative within their jurisdictions.
