Cutting pilferage from the public distribution system is becoming far easier with almost all of the 23 crore ration cards in the country being digitised and 53% of these already seeded with unique identification number Aadhaar, reports Sandip Das in New Delhi.
By: Sandip Das | New Delhi | Published: April 28, 2016 5:58 AM
Several states have now installed electronic point of sale (ePOS) devices at their fair price shops to track the sale of foodgrains to actual cardholders on a real-time basis.
Cutting pilferage from the public distribution system is becoming far easier with almost all of the 23 crore ration cards in the country being digitised and 53% of these already seeded with unique identification number Aadhaar, reports Sandip Das in New Delhi.
Besides, several states have now installed electronic point of sale (ePOS) devices at their fair price shops to track the sale of foodgrains to actual cardholders on a real-time basis.
According to the food ministry, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Chhattisgarh and Delhi, besides union territories Chandigarh and Andaman and Nicobar, have completed seeding of all the ration cards with Aadhaar. States such as Kerala (95%), Rajasthan (94%), Haryana (86%), Jharkhand (73%) and Odisha (65%) have also reported significant progress in terms of seeding of PDS beneficiaries’ cards with Aadhaar.
However, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and northeastern states such as Assam and Manipur have been slow in this technological process aimed at eliminating pilferage and ensuring that subsidised foodgrains reach intended beneficiaries.
Among the laggards, Bihar, which has 1.54 crore ration cards, still has only 9,000 cards seeded with Aadhaar. Similarly, Tamil Nadu with around 2 crore ration cards has only 4% of these cards linked with Aadhaar. On ePOS installation, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh have almost completed the process, while others like Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are catching up. States with large poor populations like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha have, however, yet to make any headway in equipping their fair price shops with ePOS devices.
With the food subsidy in the current fiscal estimated at Rs 1.34 lakh crore (the National Food Security Act has already been rolled out in 27 states and 6 UTs), compared with Rs 1.24 lakh crore (revised estimate) for last year, the government is keen to bolster direct transfer of subsidies to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts. Direct benefit transfer (DBT) in PDS, however, is still at an early stage; three UTs — Chandigarh, Puducherry and Dada and Nagar Haveli — have implemented DBT on a pilot basis.