ISLAMABAD (Kashmir English): The audit report 2025-26 of Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) for FY 2024-25 revealed irregular disbursements of billions of rupees to over 600,000 ineligible individuals, including government employees, vehicle owners, and duplicate beneficiaries, driven mainly by weak profiling and compromised system controls.
The audit by the Auditor General of Pakistan found material weaknesses in the BISP Management Information System (BISP-MIS) regarding the profiling of spouse data, disclosing a total financial exposure of over Rs25 billion across 601,850 compromised cases.
According to the official audit document, BISP disbursed Rs515.712 million to 12,078 government employees, pensioners, or their spouses under the Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) Programme during FY 2024-25, defying a federal cabinet decision on December 24, 2019, to disallow such payments to civil servants and their spouses.
These irregular disbursements included.
1) Active Government Employees: Rs25.20 million for 673 beneficiaries (grades 1-16) and Rs0.09 million for 8 beneficiaries (grade 17).
2) Spouses of Active Employees: Rs402.80 million for 9,124 beneficiaries (grades 1-16) and Rs2.54 million for 87 beneficiaries (grades 17-20).
3) Active Pensioners: Rs7.41 million for 218 beneficiaries (grades 1-16) and Rs0.70 million for 22 beneficiaries (grades 17-18).
4) Spouses of pensioners: Rs74.16 million for 1,847 beneficiaries (grades 1-16) and Rs2.81 million for 107 beneficiaries (grades 17-20). The Departmental Accounts Committee (DAC) has ordered the immediate blocking of beneficiaries and initiated recovery operations.
A test check of 275,000 vehicles in Islamabad also indicated that 1,719 beneficiaries owning vehicles beyond the stipulated threshold continued to receive payments of Rs69.744 million in UCT.
“More interestingly,” the audit highlighted that due to Islamabad representing only a “fraction of national vehicle registrations,” the true national figure of irregular payments to car owners could be far higher.
It also pointed out gaps in coordination between social protection initiatives, with a total of 165 fully sponsored schools by the Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal (PBM) also enrolled under BISP’s Benazir Taleemi Wazaif program, resulting in the double payout of Rs17.690 million. Similarly, 278 government employees were irregularly admitted as higher secondary students under Taleemi Wazaif, drawing conditional cash transfers worth Rs2.546 million for their households.
A random field check of 22 schools across Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa confirmed all 23 sampled beneficiaries in these schools had either graduated or were no longer studying, making the payments irregular.
Data Vulnerabilities: Missing CNICs and System Exploits
1) Linked Registrations: A single spouse CNIC of the beneficiary was recorded up to seven times in other cases for various females under 5,558 cases worth Rs239.035 million.
2) Missing Data: A total of 596,252 beneficiaries were reported without spouse CNIC, entailing Rs25,459.960 million payments.
Moreover, system design allowed multiple Proxy Means Test (PMT) scores for identical Heads of Household.
This oversight resulted in irregular enrollment of 18,964 beneficiaries during FY 2024-25 and an estimated misappropriation of Rs533.536 million through such duplicate PMTs. Additionally, Rs104.734 million were dispersed to 7,020 female beneficiaries reported as ‘married’ since 2017 but found to be ‘unmarried’ in the 2023-24 Dynamic Survey.
The audit also flagged statistically anomalous entries in the Dynamic Registry showing 5 to 10 married female beneficiaries at a single household without established anomaly thresholds, leading to improper payments of Rs17.374 million during FY2024-25. In response, the DAC has directed BISP management to sign an MOU with Pakistan Bait-ul-Mal for API integration and to prevent dual benefits.
BISP is also instructed to verify spouse details with Nadra, implement independent validation for marital relationships, initiate thorough inquiries to pinpoint blame, and randomly audit 10%-15% of households with high concentrations of married females through physical verification.
