Sept 2020 onwards, ration to be available in J&K only with ration card holder biometrics

ZT NEWS NETWORK

SRINAGAR: Ration card holders of J&K will be required to draw their ration only after authentication of their biometrics at the Fair Price Shops, from the month of September, 2020 onwards.

Moreover, as on date, Kulgam, Anantnag, Shopian, Kishtwar, Pulwama and Ramban have achieved more than 90 percent Aadhar linking of ration cards. However, Srinagar, Baramulla, Reasi and some districts of Jammu province have low percentage of Aadhar seeding.

This was revealed during a review meeting of the Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, (FCS&CA) chaired by its secretary Simrandeep Singh on Wednesday.

Implementation of One Nation One Ration Card scheme and Aadhar seeding of ration cards was also reviewed in J&K.

It was informed that the J&K has to achieve 100% Aadhaar seeding of all Ration Cards up to the beneficiary level, for successfully rolling out the One Nation One Ration Card scheme.

The current percentage of Aadhaar seeding at Ration Card level is 87%, whereas at beneficiary level the seeding percentage is 71%.

In the last 20 days, the Food & Civil Supplies Department has been able to link Aadhaar of nearly two lakh beneficiaries.

Further, the department has been able to weed out 1.19 lakh duplicate/silent beneficiaries from the electronic portal of the ration cards management system.

It was given out that the duplicity was on account of inter-district/ inter-state double beneficiaries.
It is estimated that in next 40 days, the department would end up weeding out an estimated 2.50 lakh duplicate beneficiaries.
It was also informed that electronic Point of Sale (e-POS) devices have to be installed at all Fair Price Shops in the J&K.

It was informed in the meeting that out of 6733 FPSs, the ePoS devices have been installed in 6500 shops.

It is pertinent to mention that One Nation One Ration Card scheme trials were successfully held in Anantnag, Shopian, Baramulla, Budgam, Kupwara, Kulgam, Doda, Samba, Udhampur, Rajouri, Kathua and Jammu districts yesterday and a number of NFSA beneficiaries from the state of Uttar Pradesh were provided ration at all these districts of J&K.

One Nation One Ration Card scheme has to be rolled out in J&K in phased manner from July, 2020 to August, 2020.