From July 1, draw ration from any fair price shop

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh/Kurukshetra, May 10

From July 1, public distribution system (PDS) consumers will be able to draw their ration from any depot in any part of the state.

This will be made possible by automation of all fair price shops (FPS) which has already been successfully launched in Ambala, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Hisar, Bhiwani and Panchkula districts from May 1. Consumers in these districts can draw their ration from any depot.

Minister of State for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Karan Dev Kamboj stated this while presiding over a meeting of senior officers of the department and representatives of the Panchayati Raj Institutes (PRIs) in Kurukshetra today.

“The FPS automation has been initiated to bring transparency in the PDS and prevent corruption at ration depots,” he said, adding that under the system, all ration cards would be linked with Aadhaar and the consumer would be able to get his ration from any depot in any part of the state.

Besides, the consumers would also get SMS alerts in Hindi on their registered mobile numbers. They would be able to get information related to transportation of grains and their arrival at depots through SMS while sitting at home, he said.

Kamboj said the initiative was part of the IT solution involving provisioning of point of sale (PoS) device at every fair price shop with connectivity to ensure Aadhaar-based biometric identification of the beneficiaries.

Sources said there were about 9,300 fair price shops in the state and these would be equipped with PoS devices. The automated system would benefit nearly 30 lakh poor families and 1.30 crore beneficiaries in the state, said an official.

Kamboj said the PoS device was integrated with the Aadhaar database and e-PDS which captures every transaction in the fair price shop on a real-time basis.

Additional Chief Secretary SS Prasad said 82 per cent of the total ration cards had been linked to the Aadhaar under the Aadhaar seeding of the targeted public distribution system.

He urged the PRI members to motivate people to furnish required details to bring efficiency and transparency in the PDS.