Ram Vilas Paswan
MINISTER FOR CONSUMER AFFAIRS, FOOD & PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION
IT MAY BE A climbdown from his earlier stints as Union minister, but this is one of Ram Vilas Paswan’s best runs. With a bit of handholding from the PMO, his ministry is close to finalising the guidelines for the amended Bureau of Indian Standards Act, digitising records of food subsidy beneficiaries, drafting changes to the Consumer Protection Act, all this while zealously monitoring commodity prices. Paswan says he’s “passionate about making the consumer king”. To that end, he came down on dual pricing of packaged food, barring eateries from levying a service charge, fixing the liability on celebrities for endorsing ‘misleading’ products . His push for Aadhaar-linked public distribution in states resulted in the cancellation of 23 million fake ration cards. The next big thing, he says, will be introducing of ‘smart (ration) cards’.