PDS digitisation deadline for states extended by a year

The extension comes even as deadline of the roll-out of the food security programme has been delayed thrice and is now slated from October 2015

The government has extended the date for states to complete digitisation of all beneficiaries under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) by one year. It is reported to have told them that if the strict deadline of December 31, 2015, is not met, only the beneficiaries in the states that have completed at 100 per cent digitisation will receive subsidies under the food security Act.

The states had been given time till December 31 last year to digitise food procurement system (FPS) data, godown data, ration card data, supply chain, open transparency portals, and seed Aadhaar card data.

According to data available on the website of the ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution till January 31 2015, while nearly all states have completed digitisation of FPS and godown data, some 13 states are lagging behind in ration card data.

These include Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

Only five states have implemented online allocation — Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Others have either not started at all, or only implemented in very few blocks and districts.

“The states have been told to complete digitisation and seeding of Aadhaar cards by end of this calender year. This is a strict deadline and will not be extended further. If they miss out then their beneficiaries will not get the payments into their account or will not get subsidised ration under the food security act,” said a senior government official.

This extension comes even as the deadline of the roll-out of the food security programme has been delayed thrice and is now slated from October 2015. Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had told Parliament recently that about 25 states and Union Territories had not completed the preparatory measures for the scheme, because of which the latest deadline of April 2015 was extended by a further six months.