Key Points

It is a Centrally Sponsored mission, where the responsibility for the implementation of various activities lies with the States and UTs. This mission is a universal self-selecting umbrella scheme where there are no entry barriers for any beneficiary to register and receive services.

Under this mission, Supplementary Nutrition is provided to Children (6 months to 6 years), Pregnant Women, Lactating Mothers and Adolescent Girls to beat the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition by adopting a life cycle approach. Supplementary nutrition is provided under the nutrition norms contained in Schedule II of the National Food Security Act.

These norms have been revised in January 2023. The old norms were largely calorie-specific; however, the revised norms are more comprehensive and balanced in terms of both quantity and quality of supplementary nutrition based on the principles of diet diversity that provide for quality protein, healthy fats and micronutrients.

The Face Recognition System (FRS) Module was initially implemented as a pilot in August 2024. It was implemented on an optional basis, pan-India in December 2024. Since then, duty holders in the States and UTs have been trained to perform facial recognition and verify beneficiaries with the Aadhaar database. It has been implemented since July 1, 2025, to ensure the last-mile delivery of take-home ration to the rightful beneficiary.

The FRS module has been developed as part of the Poshan Tracker application. To verify a beneficiary through Aadhar identification, eKYC is performed along with the capture of a liveliness image of the beneficiary.

This onboarding process is performed once in the lifetime of the beneficiary on Poshan Tracker. For availing the benefits of take-home ration every month, face matching can be performed both in online and offline mode, and no repeated eKYC is required.

The offline mode feature has been developed with consideration for areas with low digital connectivity. The Facial Recognition feature has been made compatible with low-end version phones as well. Bal Aadhar for children under 5 years of age doesn't contain any biometric data. Therefore, for children aged up to 6 years, the FRS of the mother/father/guardian is being done, not that of the child.

As on 5th August 2025, face capturing and e-KYC of 3.69 crore THR beneficiaries out of the 4.91 crore eligible beneficiaries registered for Take Home Ration(THR), which is almost 75.12%, have already been completed.

Regular training and handholding sessions have been conducted by NeGD State Coordinators.

Further, field visits by officials of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India and regular meetings with State officials have also been conducted to understand and redress technical difficulties.

Various Data Protection Safeguards exist in the system. Some of them are mentioned below.

The data of the beneficiary, which is collected, is subject to all existing data protection protocols, which mandate purpose limitation, informed consent, and access restrictions.

All requests and responses related to Face Verification are encrypted during transit, ensuring data is protected from interception or tampering.

No images or data are stored permanently on the device.

As a precautionary measure, all cached or temporary data is wiped automatically when the Anganwadi worker logs out of the application.

The private data is not publicly accessible; it is only available to authorised personnel solely for verification purposes.

The Poshan Tracker application is typically used by Anganwadi Workers, and it is not open to the public or any unauthorised party. Access is role-based, logged and monitored to prevent misuse.

Further, the application's internal database is encrypted, preventing access to sensitive information outside the app environment.

Face images are handled in encoded format within the app to ensure safe processing and transmission.

This information was given by the Minister of State for Women and Child Development, Savitri Thakur, in Lok Sabha in reply to a question today.

- ANI