CHENNAI:The Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation, responsible for the public distribution of food through fair-price shops, has completed a State-wide field verification cum survey of nearly 12 lakh ration cards in the State.
The verification process that begun on December 5 to ensure mobile numbers and respective Aadhaar identities of family members are seeded into the PDS database. “However, the entry of collected data is underway, therefore analyses may not be complete before March,” a senior official from the Civil Supplies Corporation said. The move aims to eliminate bogus ration cards and holders.
“When an Aadhaar number is linked with the ration family card, it will make sure that no person receives more than one unit of basic supplies from the system,” the official said adding that all bogus cards and repeated or deceased members will be promptly removed on identification. Based on the field verification, all cards are being classified into three types: cards seeded with complete Aadhaar and contact information, cards with incomplete information and cards with no Aadhaar or contact information. Door-to-door verification was performed for cards whose Aadhaar was unavailable. In addition to this the survey aims to earmark Priority Households (PHH) that are in urgent need of poverty alleviation. According to Government’s National Food Security Act for the civil supplies distribution, identified PHHs will comprise of all Below Poverty Line (BPL) families, families benefited under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, families headed by women or differently-abled persons and households of agricultural labourers. The Central has asked to limit the percentage of PHHs in rural areas at 62.50 per cent and in urban areas at 37.88 per cent.
The available data will digitised in smart-cards used at Point of Sale (PoS) machines that will be installed at all fair-price shops across TN. PoS machines maintain a digital track of distribution and stocks. This will also help card-holders who come under PHH benefit from targeted schemes.
