House Panel raps Centre for slow progress in PDS digitisation

Committee says in some states seeding of digitised ration cards with Aadhar cards is very low and needs to be expedited

A standing committee of Parliament on food has criticised the Central and state governments for the slow progress of digitisation of ration cards and computerisation of the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), both of which are prerequisites for the successful roll-out of the National Food Security Act (NFSA).

The committee has doubted the Centre's claim that much progress has been made in the digitisation of ration cards, their seeding with Aadhar and subsequent linking with bank accounts. It has asserted that in some states, seeding has been very low and needs to be expedited.

"The department of food and consumer affairs should expedite completion of the work relating to Aadhar seeding of the ration cards in all states and UTs in the country in a time-bound manner," the committee felt.

On the issue of digitisation of fair-price or ration shops, the committee said that authencity of data furnished by the states on this needs to be checked.

The Central government has embarked on a massive programme for digitisation of TPDS in two phases. The first includes digitisation of beneficiary databases, computerisation of supply-chain management and transparency portal or grievance redressal mechanism.

In the second component, automation of ration shops is included.

However, the Central government has marginally tweaked the second component and, instead of automation, has focused on setting up Point of Sale Devices (PoS). So far, PoS machines have been set up in over 100,000 of the 550,000 ration shops in the country.

The Committee also found that though some states have put in place a grievance redressal mechanism, quite a few toll-free numbers are dysfunctional and, in several other cases, aren't attended by an executive.

"The Committee urges the Department of Food and Public Distribution to impress upon the remaining states and UTs to set up toll-free numbers and make them operational in the states where they have already been set up," the report said.