Ration shopsin Telangana to start supplying rice to non-NFS

The Telangana government plans to commence from July 1 supply of subsidised rice to residential schools and other categories not covered under the Food Security Act through fair price shops in a bid to curb malpractices in the delivery system.

This comes close on the heels of commencing supply of rice to Anganwadi centres through FPS, which are equipped with biometric authentication -- electronic point of sale (ePOS)-- from February this year, officials of the Civil Supplies Department said.

Mid-day meal scheme schools, social welfare, tribal welfare and minority welfare residential educational institutions society and colleges come under the non-NFSA categories and they draw their ration from godowns at present, they said.

As of now beneficiaries enlisted under the National Food Security (NFS) Act were covered through the fair price shops of the public distribution system.

"Now we are extending to certain non-NFS activities... Ration supply to Anganwadis was launched in February and they are drawing their ration from fair price shops through ePOS devices and the next extension is for those who draw non-NFS, Commissioner for Civil Supplies Akun Sabharwal told PTI.

Anganwadis are already covered, and about 36,000 of them now draw their ration from FPS through ePOS point of sale machines.

We are planning by July 1 all other non-NFS categories anybody who draws food grains at a subsidisedrate has to be ePOS linked. We are trying to digitise the whole thing and we are hopeful to launch it by July 1, Sabharwal said.

Officials said supply of rice to Anganwadi centres started through ration shops has ensured transparency and accountability with usage of biometric authentication with ePOS systems at ration shops.

Previously, rice was supplied to the Anganwadi centres from Civil Supplies godowns through contractors and several complaints of malpractice were reported, they said adding biometric authentication prevents malpractice.

Sabharwal further said they have now linked the OPMS (Online Procurement Management System) software which was helping in procuring paddy to land data base and online registration of farmers so that farmer need not go to the procurement centres to get registered.

He said now the plan is to extend the OPMS software under the agriculture department to procure all other crops in Telangana.

They are using Civil Supplies expertise to extend it to other crops also. As of now paddy is procured through OPMS and the agriculture department is looking to increase it to non-cereal crops and may be turmeric, cotton. It is in progress. Our team is working with them. We will keep the software ready, he said.

From 2016-17 Kharif season, paddy purchase is done through online by OPMS and payments were made directly to farmers' accounts online to avoid involvement of middlemen.