2.79 crore anganwadi kids avail benefits of Take-Home Ration scheme using facial recognition system

New Delhi: Months after the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development introduced a facial recognition system for Take-Home Ration for pregnant and lactating women as well as Anganwadi children, the ministry said that as of December 2025, as many as 52.68% or 2.79 crore Anganwadi children have availed the benefits of the scheme.

Ministry sources said that out of 4.73 crore beneficiaries among children, 91.38% or 4.51 crore beneficiaries have done their paperwork and a little over half the beneficiaries have received their benefits.

The Facial Recognition System or FRS was introduced as a last-mile tracking of the ration distribution scheme. In Anganwadis, the ministry said that the system is used to verify the beneficiary on the basis of Aadhaar biometric details and it is added to the app used for Poshan Tracker – the ministry’s flagship nutritional benefits scheme.

“FRS-based verification, which uses facial recognition technology to confirm a person’s identity by comparing live facial features with stored templates, offers significant benefits. It provides enhanced security by leveraging the uniqueness of facial traits, making it difficult to forge or bypass,” the ministry said.

FRS was introduced in the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), the ministry’s flagship maternity benefits scheme, from May 21 last year for all new enrollments. Since then, 17.82 lakh women have enrolled into the system. In all, the scheme has 4.26 crore beneficiaries who received Rs 20,060 crore.

The FRS system, which was introduced in May last year, and made mandatory in August, has been met with stiff resistance from Anganwadi workers unions across the country. The ministry had piloted it in August 2024 in a few districts in Jharkhand. Some of these unions have also taken the matter to court – last month some Anganwadi unions reached the Bombay High Court against the verification system.

The WCD ministry on Thursday released a portal to bring under one platform NGOs, NRIs and individuals for their CSR as well as other developmental contributions under various fields for women and children.The PANKHURI Portal, released by union WCD minister Annapurna Devi will streamline “voluntary and institutional contributions” in sarees like nutrition, health, Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), child welfare, protection and rehabilitation, and women’s safety and empowerment. The ministry said that the portal will improve the infrastructure and services provided across the country’s 14 lakh Aanganwadi Centres, 5000 child care institutions, 800 One Stop Centres and other such institutional delivery network.