Fact Check: No, Govt Is Not Providing Rs 50,000 To Ration Card Holders

A link to a website named, "rsby.org", is being circulated with the claim that the Government of India will provide financial aid of Rs 50,000 to ration card holders under a scheme called 'Rashtriya Shikshit Berojgar Yojana'.

A Facebook page dedicated to this scheme was also created in February 2020.

According to the website, 'Rashtriya Shikshit Berojgar Yojana' is a Pilot Project started by the Government of India, in collaboration with the World Bank. This project is an autonomous body under the Government of India. Central Government announced a relief package worth Rs 1.70 lakh crore to help the nation's poor tackle the financial difficulties arising from the Covid-19 outbreak. The economic relief package will focus primarily on migrant labourers and daily wage labourers.

Further, it states that the scheme is available only for the first 40,000 applicants and the money will be transferred online.

The website is not active now. The Facebook page too has been taken down.

Claim:

Under the 'Rashtriya Shikshit Berojgar Yojana', Government of India will provide financial aid of Rs 50,000 to ration cardholders.

Fact Check:

The claim is false.

Similar Government Website

There is a government website with a similar URL: 'http://www.rsby.gov.in/'

However, this is an official website for providing health insurance to the poor. This scheme is called 'Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna' (RSBY).

RSBY is a government-run health insurance programme for the poor. Under this scheme, the government aims to provide health insurance coverage to the unrecognised sector workers belonging to the BPL category and their family members. Cashless insurance for hospitalisation in public, as well as private hospitals, are provided.

PIB Clarifies

The Press Information Bureau (PIB) has clarified on their official Twitter account and said that no such scheme has been launched by Govt of India.

The website mentioned in the viral claims was inactivated following the PIB clarification.

Fraud Website

The URL mentioned in the social media posts look suspicious because despite claiming to be a Government website, the URL does not have a gov.in or nic.in domain, which all government-run websites always have.

Example: https://www.mha.gov.in/

The website states that the scheme will be available to only to 40,000 citizens who avail the relief package first. The government does not offer any scheme on a first come first serve basis.

According to the norm, all government websites have the designated ministry's title written under the national emblem. The www.rsby.org site, however, only shows a logo and a national emblem, without the name of the ministry involved.

As seen in the Ministry of Home Affairs logo here.

The website is also rife with grammatical errors.

Scheme Unavailable In Govt Directory

On searching 'Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna' in the Government of India web directory, no results came up. The GOI web directory is a one-point source to access all Indian Government Websites at all levels and from all sectors.

According to an Economic Times report, the government on March 26 announced a Rs 1.7 lakh crore relief package to provide for those hit the hardest by the COVID-19 lockdown, along with insurance cover for frontline medical personnel.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana includes higher wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA), Rs 1,000 ex-gratia payment to nearly 30 million poor senior citizens, widows and disabled as well as insurance coverage of as much as Rs 50 lakh each for about 2 million healthcare workers battling the disease.

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