Biometric system to ‘monitor’ ‘fair play’ at PDS shops in UP

LUCKNOW: In a move aimed at plugging several malpractices plaguing the public distribution system (PDS) in the state, the Akhilesh Yadav government is going to instal hi-tech point of sale (POS) devices at PDS shops.

Initially, the networked biometric touchscreen-fitted weighing machines-cum point of sale devices will be installed at 1000 PDS shops in the current financial year. The remaining shops will be covered by March 2017.

“We have identified 1000 PDS shops, at least one in each town and city across the state, for installation of the hi-tech POS devices by March this year,” principal secretary, food and civil supply, Sudhir Garg told the HT, adding further, “The devices would be installed in remaining shops by the end of next financial year.” There are nearly 75,000 fair price shops in the state.

The machine will authenticate the biometric details of a ration card holder before generating a bill while also sending the information to the central server thus leaving little scope for sale of goods from the concerning vendor to a bogus customer. Each PDS beneficiary, under the proposed system, will be issued ration cards in the form of a smart card containing all the biometric details. As soon the card is swiped at a fair price shop, all his/her data will be available and updated instantly thus curbing the fudging of manual records and diverting the quota to unauthorised customers.

“Apart from this, we will be able to know online the stock at each fair price shop. Hence fresh delivery of stock will be given first to the dealer that has sincerely utilised the quota by distributing goods to eligible customers,” Garg pointed out.

He said under the proposed system, ration card holders would have the option to buy goods from any fair price shop in their town and not necessarily one marked for a locality. “This will create an additional business pressure on vendors,” he said.

There is said to be leakage and pilferage of grains at each point of the supply chain- from procurement to distribution. Quite often multiple ration cards are issued to a single person thus prohibiting allocation of food to the deserving ones.