Union Secretary, Food & Public Distribution visits J&K

JAMMU : Union Secretary, Department of Food & Public Distribution, Sanjeev Chopra today visited Jammu and reviewed the functioning of Department of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs and FCI here.
He also assessed the status of implementation of schemes and other reforms across Jammu and Kashmir.
Interacting with the officers of the FCS&CA Department, J&K and FCI, J&K, here, the Union Secretary hailed the efforts made by the department in making the Public Distribution System clean and efficient. He asked the officers to continue these efforts and take follow up actions on suspect beneficiaries, whose details are being shared by the Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India, with States/UTs.
The Union Secretary while advising the Department to share details of savings made, subsequent to implementation of Optimized Route Plan, also instructed the FCI to make available food grains in different districts as per Route Optimization Plan.
The Union Secretary also reviewed the operations of FCI, J&K region.
While reviewing the wheat procurement in the J&K region, he emphasised that FCI and FCS&CA J&K should make all out efforts to ensure procurement of wheat and try achieve the target fixed by GOI in RMS 2025-26.
Earlier, in his presentation, Commissioner Secretary FCS&CA, Zubair Ahmad presented an overview of the functioning of the department with stress on new initiatives and issues flagged by Central Government.
He informed the Union Secretary that the Department is presently providing free and subsidised food grains to 24.76 lac households, comprising 98.81 lac beneficiaries in J&K.
While 67 lac beneficiaries are provided free foodgrains every month under PMGKAY, another 31.75 lac beneficiaries are provided food grains at highly subsidised rate in NPHH group.
He also said that the distribution network across J&K is built around 6622 sale outlets and 6390 such outlets are presently working in an online mode. He added that Aadhaar authentication rate of 95% has been achieved in distribution process by now.
He also informed that after achieving 100% Aadhaar seeding, the Department has completed e-KYC of 87% beneficiaries under NFSA and 75% of beneficiaries in Non Priority Households group. He also apprised the Union Secretary that the department has started implementation of Route Optimization Plan in eight districts of J&K on trial basis and complete implementation across all the districts would commence in the month of June,2025.
The Union Secretary was also apprised about the status of implementation of SMART PDS in J&K.
Regarding One Nation-One Ration Card (ONORC), the Union Secretary was informed that till now 1.66 lakh interstate and 29.33 lakh intrastate transactions were made under NFSA alone, taking J&K to 9th position in the country.
Later, Sanjeev Chopra also visited Fair Price Shop at Jhajjar Kotli and interacted with the dealer and the beneficiaries. He advised the officers to undertake updation of mobile numbers of beneficiaries and also emphasized on enhancing the viability of FPSs.
The Union Secretary was accompanied by Commissioner Secretary FCS&CA, Director, FCS & CA Jammu, Rifat Kohli; General Manager, FCI , L.Chatru Naik and other officials of the Department.