The Delhi government has ordered the cancellation of 179,000 ration cards after identifying them as ineligible and/or duplicate during a scrutiny exercise to weed out such cards from the public distribution system, officials said on Monday.179,000 ration cards ‘ineligible’ or ‘duplicates’ in Delhi; to be cancelledAccording to an order issued by the Department of Food, Supplies and Consumer Affairs on July 22, a total of 179,825 ration cards, covering 745,107 beneficiaries, will be cancelled or deleted from the database at the headquarters level. The action follows scrutiny under four categories flagged by the department’s dashboard.The move is aimed at ensuring that benefits under the National Food Security Act reach only eligible households by removing ineligible, inactive, deceased and duplicate beneficiaries from the ration card database, officials said.The largest category comprises 144,075 ration cards covering 647,473 beneficiaries, where the income of one or more family members, as reflected in the CBDT database, exceeds ₹6 lakh annually, making them ineligible for subsidised rations.Another 35,750 ration cards, covering 97,634 beneficiaries, have been cancelled because no ration had been lifted against them for more than 12 months. The department classified these as “silent” cards.The department has also directed the deletion of 25,378 beneficiaries under two additional categories. These include 4,987 beneficiaries whose Aadhaar status has been updated as deceased and 20,391 duplicate beneficiaries found to be registered in another state.Earlier this month, the government notified the Delhi Food Security (Amendment) Rules, 2026, raising the annual income limit for new ration cards from ₹1.20 lakh to ₹2.5 lakh.Earlier this year, the government carried out a large-scale verification drive that led to the cancellation of over 230,000 ration cards. Officials said the exercise identified 144,000 beneficiaries whose income exceeded the earlier limit, 35,800 inactive cardholders, 29,580 deceased beneficiaries and 23,394 duplicate cards. Delhi currently has 1.54 million active ration cards.Chief minister Rekha Gupta has announced that the government will issue 200,000 fresh ration cards this year.