BHUBANESWAR: Alleging circulation of around five lakh ghost ration cards in Odisha, the BJP on Wednesday targeted the State government by stating that the beneficiaries are people close to the ruling BJD.
Accusing the State government of promoting corruption, State BJP secretary Tankadhar Tripathy said as per official records there are 96,76,934 ration card holders in the State.
The free ration distributed under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana was lifted by 87,39,494 beneficiaries in May. This shows that 5,43,699 card holders have not lifted their free food grains.
Curiously, 88,76,162 persons have lifted their subsidised ration (at Rs 1/kg rice) under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in the month of May. As many as 4,07,031 card holders did not buy their ration.
In June 2021 the total number of card holders lifting the free ration was 88,23, 034 leaving a gap of 4,54,451.
Interestingly, more number (88,72,827) of card holders purchased their subsidised ration in the same month. The One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) scheme allows eligible beneficiaries to avail food grains that they are entitled to under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from any fair price shop (FPS) across the country.
“If more than five lakh card holders are not lifting free ration under (PMGKAY), we suspect that these cards are distributed to persons who do not exist. The lack of concern of the State government to find out why such a large number of beneficiaries is not taking the benefit of the welfare scheme during Covid-19 pandemic lockdown is intriguing,” Tripathy told mediapersons.
He said that the Centre had released Rs 955.16 crore for distribution of free ration to people covered under NFSA in the first wave of the pandemic. The utilisation certificates submitted by the district civil supplies officers to the State government so far comes to about Rs 934 crore. The Rs 21 crore which remained unspent was meant for around 2 lakh NFSA beneficiaries.
“Government claimed that more than 10 lakh migrant labourers returned to the State and a majority of them were covered under the free ration scheme. There is more to these discrepancies in the number of ration cards in circulation and the lifting of free food grains than meets the eye, the BJP leader alleged.