NEW DELHI: After eight years, the Arvind Kejriwal-led-Delhi government has finally approved the constitution of vigilance committees for Fair Price Shop in the city. The proposal was cleared by L-G VK Saxena, who came down heavily on the government for taking eight years to approve the crucial oversight panel meant to ensure that subsidised ration reaches the real beneficiaries, sources said.
The constitution of the vigilance committees is mandated under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013. Sources said that Saxena noted that the whole process to constitute the committee, that seeks to ensure transparency in Public Distribution system (PDS) which directly affects the common man, has been dealt in a very lackadaisical manner and was marred with inordinate delay.
A source said that the L-G House received the file from the government enclosing the proposal to constitute the committees on March 27 this year—six years after it was mooted first by the Food and Supplies Department in 2017.
“Since then, the proposal kept oscillating at different levels and remained pending. On one occasion at the level of the Food and Supplies Minister, no headway was observed for 9 months — from December 2021 to September 2022 — before it was returned to the department without assigning any reason,” the source said.
“The proposal was put up to the Minister, Imran Hussain, on eight different occasions since 2017, but it was returned every time. Hussain kept sitting on the file for more than one year before sending it back to the department,” he added.
It may be noted that the Food and Civil Supplies Department constituted the vigilance committees at state, district and block level in 2014 when the city was under the President’s Rule but the constitution of the panel at FPS level remained pending, even after AAP came to power in 2015.
The L-G also noted in the file that the vigilance panel at FPS level has been constituted in almost every other state including Assam, UP, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Goa, Odisha, Tripura 2016 - 2018, but Delhi could not do so till now.
Will keep a check on unethical practices
The Vigilance Committees entails ration card holders, women, beneficiaries from SC/ST and other weaker sections as its members. It ensures that ration reaches the targeted beneficiaries and is not siphoned. It also oversees the addition and deletion of names of beneficiaries to the Fair Price Beneficiary list, apart from keeping vigil over the quality of food grain being supplied and timely delivery