Drive to trace 60,000 fake ration card holders

The AAP government’s food and supplies department has initiated a door-to-door drive to verify the antecedents of about 60,000 fake ration card holders in the national capital.

While verifying the antecedents of about 20 lakh ration card holders, the department had tracked 60,000 fake cards. A highly placed source said that the department’s decision to cancel fake ration cards was reportedly turned down by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal who directed the officers to carry out the door-to-door verification of the card holders before taking a final call on the matter. Due to acute shortage of manpower, the department is learnt to be finding it very difficult to verify the antecedents of each card holder. Reports suggest that about 72.78 lakh people in Delhi are availing various subsidy benefits through their ration cards.

A senior officer said that the AAP government’s proposal to increase the ration card beneficiaries from the existing 72.78 lakh to 80 lakh was turned down by the Centre. The Union Government’s contention was that it is unlikely that the city with a population of 1.25 crore should provide subsidised items to 80 lakh people.

In a letter to the food and supplies minister Imran Hussain, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan had said: “I would like to inform you that state/ UT wise coverage under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) for receiving subsidised food grains was determined by the then Planning Commission (now Niti Ayog), based on household consumption expenditure survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), now known as National Sample Survey Office, an organisation under the Union ministry of statistics for 2011-12. Since a uniform methodology has been adopted for all the state/UTs, it will not be possible to agree to request for increase in coverage for any particular state /UT.”

Mr Paswan said that in addition to the estimated annual food grain allocation of 4.55 lakh tons for the coverage determined for Delhi under the Act, the UT was also eligible to receive ‘tide over’ allocation of about 1.8 lakh tons per annum at the existing “above poverty line” (APL) prices. He said that the additional allocation can be used for providing subsidised food grains to leftover, deriving, and needy population. At present, the government provides subsidised ration to card holders as per the NFSA enacted by the Parliament in 2013. The main purpose of the Act is to provide food and nutritional security in the human life cycle approach by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food.