BENGALURU: Following Aadhaar seeding of ration cards in the state, around 8.5 lakh bogus ration cards have been cancelled. Due to the prevalence of such cards, each Fair Price Shop (FPS) used to have 60-70 extra cards, which have been removed from the system, said Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister U T Khader here on Wednesday.
Installation of biometric Point of Sale machines -- which also ensures that food reaches the beneficiaries -- is complete in 80 per cent of the Fair Price Shops in the state, he said. As per department data, PoS machines have been installed in 16,832 of the 20,335 shops in the State.In the remainder of the shops, PoS machines will be installed under Common Service Centres (CSC) Scheme, an initiative of Central government.
Under CSC, a private agency will be allowed to install biometric PoS devices and provide broadband connectivity to the devices. “One of the major complaints we had while installing these biometric devices is lack of internet connectivity. Under the scheme, these issues will be sorted and all Fair Price Shops will have internet connected PoS devices within a year or year-and-a-half,” Khader said.All FPSs will be upgraded to ‘Seva Sindhu Kendras’, which can then be used by locals to book online tickets or for other online purposes, he said.
Ration card verification
Under the second phase of ration card verification and distribution, 15.26 lakh of the total 15.45 lakh applications have been cleared. As many as 11.71 lakh cards have been delivered to the residence of the beneficiaries, while the remaining are in various stages of clearance. About 26,000 applications were rejected for various reasons, he said. In terms of Aadhaar seeding of ration cards, 100 per cent family seeding and 97 per cent individual seeding for the cards is complete, he said.
Anila Bhagya forms available from Jan 16
Applications for Anila Bhagya scheme will be available for beneficiaries from January 16, and 1.5 lakh will be eligible under the first phase of the scheme, said Khader.After the application, an alert on whether the family has been selected will be issued, following which they have to complete formalities to receive the connection in the local gram panchayat office. This process will be completed in a week, he said.