Contrary to its persistent stand to put an end to inspector raj to bring in transparency and check corruption, the AAP government’s food and supplies minister Imran Hussain has ordered that his department’s inspectors will again be responsible for opening the sale of ration items. The city government had abolished the procedure for opening of sale of ration shops through food and supplies inspectors on November 19, 2014.
There are 2,530 fair price ration shops which provide subsidised commodities to 19.54 lakh families in the city. That means, about 72.77 lakh people are getting benefits under the Food Security Act.
During a weekly review meeting of the food and supplies department, it was discussed that due to abolition of opening of sale through inspectors, lack of coordination between the department and ration shop owners was being observed as a result of which complaints against the shop owners in the public grievance management system portal and on other helpline numbers were constantly increasing. Most of the complaints were reportedly about not opening of shops and issuing of specified food articles to the beneficiaries from the first day of the month.
Many officials at the meeting were of the view that possibility of diversion of specified food articles had increased due to several reasons as stock-taking was not witnessed by inspectors on a regular basis. Accordingly, it was decided to abolish the system of non-opening of sale by the food and supplies inspectors from May 2016.
A circular to this effect issued by assistant commissioner Girish Pandey said: “Thus the system of opening of sale by food and supplies inspector is hereby re-started on an experimental basis initially for three months only. Therefore, all the assistant commissioners are hereby directed to ensure the opening of sale of specified food article through food and supplies inspector as per pervious practice and will make the entry of opening of sale in the inspection books accordingly for three months only which will be reviewed thereafter.”
A senior officer said that the government had stopped the involvement of the inspectors through a circular on November 19, 2014 following reports of rampant corruption by ration shop owners and inspectors. “If the government was keen to put an end to corruption, it should have introduced any other system or technology to check corruption. The latest circular is bound to bring back Inspector Raj.”
Quoting the Union government’s guidelines, an order issued by the state government on November 19, 2014, had said that the specified food articles for a month should reach the fair price shops before the beginning of the month and accordingly arrangements have been made by the DSCCS Ltd. to ensure timely transportation of the specified food articles to fair price shops. The circular said: “Moreover, the procedure of opening of sale by inspector / FSO of each commodity in each FPS every month is very cumbersome and leads to wastage of time, harassment to FPS owners and also leads to complaints of various departments.”
