STAFF REPORTER
MUMBAI, MAY 22, 2018 00:18 IST
The Maharashtra government on Monday claimed it has replaced the undeserving 99 lakh beneficiaries in its public distribution system (PDS) with the help of Aadhaar-enabled PDS (AePDS).
According to Girish Bapat, Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, the process will continue for some months, and the undeserving people will be replaced with genuine beneficiaries.
“When we started linking the ration card with Aadhaar numbers, we found that thousands of names were either duplicated or bogus and many of these beneficiaries had died long before, but foodgrains were drawn in their name. Within a month of the implementation of AePDS, we removed 99 lakh such names. Now, we can replace these with 99 lakh people who deserve to be covered under the Food Security Act,” said Mr Bapat, addressing a press conference.
With an annual expenditure of ₹14,000 crore, the minister said the corrections would save the State exchequer nearly ₹4,200 crore. “The AePDS helped the state to filter the system as centre has fixed state’s quota to seven crore people to be covered under the Food Security Act 2013. The coming months will filter the ration card database further,” said Mr Bapat.