District Administration Kishtwar weeds out 1,773 fake PDS beneficiaries

73013.28 Qtls free ration distributed during till Feb, 2022

KISHTWAR, MARCH 12: The district Administration Kishtwar has cleaned up 1,773 bogus and ineligible beneficiaries from the public distribution system to ensure that the subsidised food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) reach the genuine beneficiaries.

Assistant Director, Food Supplies & Consumer Affairs (FS&CA) said that the digitalisation drive of ration cards has helped the department to improve transparency and efficiency of the public distribution system.

The AD, FS&CA further informed that the department is taking innovative measures to weed out fake or duplicate ration cards holders/beneficiaries and extend benefits to the deserving persons. The ration cards/RC holders/beneficiaries are being deleted automatically by linking the PDS to birth and death records and the Department has started convergence of different social welfare benefits to identify the deserving beneficiaries, he added.

“We are using the convergence method to find out those who have been left out of the National Food Security Act coverage,” disclosed the AD FCS&CA.

Since NFSA beneficiaries are economically weaker, they are covered under different social welfare schemes. Once you put all data at one place, you can easily make out who are eligible for NFSA and If this convergence of benefits is done using the unique identities like Aadhaar number, the unqualified beneficiaries can easily be detected,” said the officer.

He informed that “special drives” were launched to identify poor, particularly from the most vulnerable groups, who can get ration cards to avail subsidised foodgrain every month under NFSA.

He said on weeding out ineligible ration cards, the department keeps on adding new beneficiaries within the ceiling of coverage defined for each stage.

During the current FY (2021-22), 121967.33 Qtls. of food grains were distributed under NFSA/NPHH among the beneficiaries till Feb, 2022 and 73013.28 Qtls of food grains were distributed free of cost among eligible beneficiaries (AAY & PHH beneficiaries) under PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY), he informed further.

A beneficiary Imtiyaz Ahmed from Malipath Kishtwar, while extending gratitude to the LG government said that he received 3 kg free rice and 2 kg wheat per month under PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY) till this month to fight situation arising due to Corona pandemic.

He also said that the introduction of the biometric system has made the distribution more transparent and applauded the efforts of govt for bringing in much needed transparency and accountability at the ground level.

Elaborating further, the AD, FS&CA said now migratory/ inter-state beneficiaries can easily avail food grains under ONORC Scheme from any ration shop in Kishtwar district like other districts.