There has been a 2.50 per cent drop in the number of family cards approved by the Civil Supplies Department after it carried out an extensive validation exercise for nearly three months from January to March 12 to weed out bogus cards.
As many as 1,93,42,831 family cards were renewed during this period against the existing number of 1,97,82,000 family cards. A majority of the cards approved belong to the green card category (rice card) 1,82,15,303, white card (sugar alone), 10,26,528 and ‘no commodity' card (N card) 61,000.
Official sources said the decline of 2.5 per cent could be attributed to door-to-door inspection carried out by the department officials; making it mandatory for one of those listed in the cards to sign the register kept at the fair price shop; or, the cardholders' inability to visit the shop because they were busy or were not in town.
Other reasons included elimination of bogus cards and some holders of bogus cards taking the precaution of not seeking renewal. In some cases, cardholders may have just decided not to make the effort to come to the PDS outlets. “During inspection, we came to know that some people in the same family were holding two rice cards, a sugar card and an ‘N' card. We approved the cards based on the number of operational gas stoves in their kitchens, even though some of them claimed they were living as a separate family. In the case of induction stoves, we merely went through the monthly electricity bill. Thus, we were able to bring down a sizeable number of cards,” an official said.
To give an opportunity to those who had missed the opportunity to renew their cards in time, the department asked them to apply online. Though the site received three lakh hits, the department received 82,159 applications, of which 23,000 are under various stages of verification.
During this period, the department received about 65 lakh applications requesting changes in names, addresses, or addition or deletion of members.
According to the officials, the first six months of 2011 witnessed deletion of bogus cards and issue of new cards. From June 2011 to March 2012, about 3.91 lakh cards were issued.
“The next stage is to go for issue of smart family card, for which an official announcement will be made soon, the official said.
