MADURAI: An elaborate door-to-door verification exercise to identify priority households (PHH) as part of the implementation of National Food Security Act (NFSA) is expected to commence from next week, sources in the district administration said.
With Tamil Nadu implementing NFSA from November 1, officials said that it had become mandatory to identify PHHs even though the State had said that it would continue universal coverage with its Public Distribution System (PDS).
According to officials, the Central government has asked the State to limit the percentage of PHHs in rural areas at 62.50 per cent and in urban areas at 37.88 per cent.
Consequently, the intensive verification exercise of all ration card holders has been planned to eliminate bogus beneficiaries and ensure that only the truly eligible households come under PHHs that receive additional benefits.
In the elaborate guidelines issued by the Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection department for the exercise, the district administrations have been asked to make use of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) lists and the list of beneficiaries under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) available with Rural Development department for easy identification of PHHs.
While the inclusion criteria for PHHs include all BPL families, families headed by women or differently-abled persons and households of agricultural labourers, the exclusion criteria include households with at least one income tax payer, households owning air-conditioner or four-wheeler, farmers with more than five acres of land and those with annual family income of more than Rs. 1 lakh.
The district administrations have also been asked to use this exercise as an opportunity to validate the ration card data, which is already digitised to a large extent, for issue of smart cards expected to commence in the near future .
A majority of the officials has raised concerns that the manpower, financial assistance and time provided for the exercise is grossly inadequate. “There are about 9.4 lakh ration card holders in Madurai district. Door-to-door verification of all these is somewhat equivalent to data collection for Census and they want us to finish it by third week of December,” said a Tahsildar-rank official.
He, however, added that the concerns had been taken to the notice of senior-level officials, who had assured of some mitigation measures.
