Himachal govt gears up to deal with duplicate ration cards

Himachal Pradesh is gearing up to make all ration cards computerised and bring the details online as this would help the government detect excess cards in the hill state.

Food and civil supplies minister G S Bali told reporters on Wednesday that currently there are over 16.3 lakh ration cards registered but refused to say how many of them were suspected to be duplicate .

"We will soon be able to know how many of these cards are in excess after the computerisation of our entire data," said Bali.

For many years the state is receiving less supplies from the Union civil supplies ministry as the PDS demand is more than its population .

The minister welcomed union finance minister Arun Jaitley's move to check hoarding of food items as it was leading to sharp rise of food and vegetable prices.

"We have decided to strictly deal with those shopkeepers who do not prominently display the price of commodities being sold," Bali said

Asked about the spate of road accidents in the state in recent months Bali who is also the transport minister said that the accidents were not so much due to failure of vehicles but due to bad road conditions and overloading in rural areas .

"We have included 500 new buses in the state road ways fleet and retired many old buses." He said a committee has been formed to identify more black spots or such points which were most prone to accidents .