Biometric ration cards for northeast soon

SHILLONG - The central government is working on introducing biometric ration cards in the northeastern states to weed out bogus cards and curb corruption in the distribution of subsidised food commodities, an official said Monday.

“We are looking at the new technology to computerise the public distrubution system (PDS) to ensure it is corruption free,” union Food Secretary Alka Sirohi told IANS.

The new innovation is aimed at curbing diversion of rice and wheat and to strengthen targeted public distribution system (TPDS), as according to the evaluation study by ORG Centre for Social Research, New Delhi, the diversion of food grain is high in northeastern states, especially in Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland.

However, officials from these states rejected the findings during the meeting of food secretaries of the northeastern states here.

Sirohi, who reviewed the food scenario with the state food secretaries, said the central government is keen to introduce the biometric ration card to curb the menance of bogus ration cards.

In the biometric system, the fingerprints of the beneficiaries would be used for their identification so that transparency could be ensured.

Two years ago, the Meghalaya government had mooted the idea to introduce an electronic bar-coded food coupon system to plug out the pilferage of the highly-subsidised rice meant for poor people living under below poverty line in the state.

Sirohi, however, hoped that the introduction of the biometric ration cards would strengthen the PDS and help in maintaining transparency on every allocation for every states in the region.

“What concerns us is that northeast does not have adequate space storage for foodgrain and lack of sufficient number of railway siding sheds,” Sirohoi said.

She said the Food Corporation of India (FCI) is taking up construction of sheds at the highest priority godowns through the existing 11th Plan funds for northeast.

“We will go on massive construction programmes of sheds which will have an additional storage capacity of over seven lakhs tonnes,” she said.