Govt intends to eliminate bogus, ineligible ration cards: Satish Sharma

JAMMU: Minister for Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Satish Sharma, on monday said that the government intends to make all endeavours to eliminate bogus and ineligible ration cards as a continuous process.

The Minister was replying to a question raised by Mir Saifullah.

He informed the House that the General Administration Department has ordered a verification of beneficiaries to make the PDS database clean and credible. He added that the Government of lndia has advised the States/UTs to undertake proper verification and remove undeserving beneficiaries from the ration cards from time to time

The Minister said that the process of verification has been ordered to include and retain genuine beneficiaries under PDS and weed the undeserving beneficiaries so as to meet the requirements of Targeted Public Distribution System. He said that every AAY household receives 35 Kg of food grains every month while every PHH beneficiary receives 5Kg of food grains every month, free of cost, under the ambitious National Food Security Act (NFSA).

The Minister assured the House that the order issued by the GAD for verification of beneficiaries shall be put on hold.

G.A Mir, Sajjad Gani Lone, Mir Mohammad Fayaz, Syed Bashir Veeri and Mehraj Malik raised the supplementaries to the question.