TNN | Aug 1, 2016, 06.36 AM IST
Trichy: The scanning of aadhaar cards is in full swing at all the 1,211 ration shops in the district in the last few days. Though the move has been aimed at collecting the unique identification number of the card holders for making smart cards that is expected to be issued from January 2017, the move will also help in weeding out bogus ration cards.
The process of scanning Aadhaar cards of all the 7,83,493 ration card holders in the district commenced on August 24. The process will go on till August 10.
The purpose of gathering the Aadhaar details is to ensure that there will be no mismatch in the database.
A couple of months back, the consumer protection and civil supplies department had collected the Aadhaar details and linked them to the ration card. They also updated the mobile number of the ration card holders to send the bills through SMS to replace paper bills.
Sources said that the manual entry of the Aadhaar numbers led to some errors in the database as the staff responsible for making the entries made the error. As a result, the move to single out bogus ration cards could not be achieved.
In this context the consumer protection and civil supplies department asked the consumers to re-submit the Aadhaar cards to enable the staff to scan them through electronic point of sale (E-POS) machines which have been provided to all the shops.
"Since one Aadhaar card can only be linked to one ration card, bogus card holders will not be able to misuse the system," said district supply officer, Trichy, M Velumani.