Minister seeks BISP devolution to provinces, action on corruption claims

A minister of state has demanded that the Benazir Income Support Programme be transferred to the provincial governments and that action be taken against what he called a corruption mafia inside the programme, after the National Assembly was told that more than 2.25 million beneficiaries had been struck off its records.

Kheal Das Kohistani, Minister of State for Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony, told reporters that BISP, which he said is worth more than Rs800 billion, would be better managed by the provinces, and that they should also bear its financial burden. He held the programme and its officials responsible for the alleged corruption, and urged the relevant institutions to act against those responsible and to recover money paid to fake and ineligible beneficiaries.

The figures he was responding to were placed before the House during question hour on Friday by the Ministry of Poverty Alleviation and Social Safety Division. According to both TechJuice and ARY News, the ministry said 2,259,404 beneficiaries were removed from BISP between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026, and that payments to more than 800,000 other beneficiaries were suspended.

The same replies stated that an audit report had identified 140,488 government employees and their family members as BISP beneficiaries during 2019-20. More than Rs712 million has been recovered from fake and ineligible beneficiaries, of which over Rs545 million came through the Federal Investigation Agency and more than Rs21 million from BISP employees themselves. The ministry also reported 55,579 complaints in the previous fiscal year about unauthorised deductions from beneficiaries' funds, embezzlement and misappropriation.

Kohistani said mechanisms to act against the misuse of public funds already exist, and that a large number of corruption complaints come from Sindh. He alleged that agents and government employees take money from beneficiaries at several stages, including when they go to withdraw their payments.

BISP is the federal government's principal cash transfer scheme for low-income households, and the demand to devolve it touches on a dispute over which tier of government should fund and run social protection. Neither account carried an immediate response from BISP or from the poverty alleviation ministry to the minister's allegations or to his call for the programme to be shifted to the provinces.