NEW DELHI, June 18: The Ministry of Women and Child Development has issued a nationwide directive mandating the use of face recognition technology across all Anganwadi centres for beneficiary authentication and service delivery, starting August 1, 2025.

According to the ministry’s order last month, face recognition will be required for new beneficiary registration, attendance monitoring, and take-home ration (THR) distribution. This move, integrated through the government’s POSHAN Tracker application, is aimed at strengthening transparency, ensuring last-mile delivery, and curbing leakages in the nutrition support system.

Beginning July 1, Anganwadi centres will be required to record the attendance and meal consumption of children aged 3–6 years through the face authentication module. Beneficiaries can self-register via the citizen module of the POSHAN Tracker using e-KYC and live photo capture. The same technology will be used to authenticate THR distribution from July 1 onwards.

From August 1, new registrations for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and adolescent girls must be authenticated via Aadhaar-linked e-KYC and face recognition. For children up to 6 years old, the Aadhaar number of a parent or guardian will be needed. Children aged 3–6 will have their photograph taken using liveliness detection, which will later serve for verification during service delivery. Those transitioning from the 0–3 age group to 3–6 will be required to update their photos accordingly.

The ministry has urged state and UT officials to expedite onboarding of all registered beneficiaries and assist in updating Aadhaar-linked mobile numbers and photographs to ensure seamless authentication. The directive follows earlier communications dated November 12, 2024, and March 5, 2025, which had laid out a phased rollout plan.

Significantly, the ministry also hinted that the proposed revision of cost norms announced in the Union Budget on February 1, 2025, would be tied to the actual implementation of the face authentication system across states and UTs.

States and Union Territories are expected to achieve 100% onboarding of registered beneficiaries in campaign mode, a target originally set for March 25, 2025.