An intensive verification of ration cards began here on Sunday as part of the initiative taken up by the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs to weed out bogus ration cards and check misuse of ration by the fair price shops.
In a statement here on Sunday, Commissioner for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Harsh Gupta said the drive, which was carried out in informal rationing area of Bangalore, will soon be extended to other cities, districts and taluks in the State.
Mr Gupta said the department, which has 42 food inspectors in the Bangalore Informal Rationing Area, has formed two teams consisting of 21 Inspectors each for this verification campaign.
The department will select one fair price shop at random and take the list of cardholders of that shop. The inspectors will then pay a house-to-house visit and verify the details of cardholders and members cited in the ration card in the jurisdiction of that particular fair price shop.
“At the end of the verification, if there are significant numbers of bogus cards in a fair price shop, the license of the shop will be initially suspended and later cancelled, besides, action will be taken to recover the quantum of misused ration,” the statement said. The inspector of the area will also be suspended
Due to the shortage of staff, the department plans to verify one fair price shop in one zone out of the five zones in Bangalore Informal Rationing Area and 30 districts every week to filter and cancel bogus ration cards.
Licenses suspended
On Sunday morning, Mr Gupta said, the team of inspectors took out a list of ration cardholders of Manjunath C C H, a fair price shop in Chamarajpet in Bangalore South Zone Informal Rationing Area.
“In a four hour house-to-house visit on Sunday, the inspecting team could not trace the addresses of 64 cardholders - out of the addresses of 205 cardholders verified – which might be anonymous addressees with pseudonymous names”. The Department has suspended the license of the fair price shop and recovered the misappropriation of ration from the shop owner.
