Geo-fencing of e-POS machines from next week

LUCKNOW: Geo-fencing facility to track movement of electronic point of sale machines (e-POS) will be activated from next week to check anomalies in the public distribution system (PDS) of the UP food and civil supplies department.

The e-POS machines are given to fair price shop owners for feeding Aadhaar numbers and taking thumb impressions of beneficiaries.

Geo-fencing will help senior authorities track the movement of the e-POS machines, if they are moved out of certain area and help in curbing the anomalies by fair price shop owners, said Alok Kumar, commissioner, food and civil supplies.

“Some of the e-POS machines that have the option of the facility will be activated from October 1,” he said.

He said details of the machine’s movement could be retrieved every month to ensure it is not moved out of the shop for fake transactions of rations.

Geo-fencing is a feature in a software programme that uses global positioning system (GPS) or radio frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries.

Kumar said the process of geo-fencing e-POS machines was initiated after several lakh fake transactions done by a nexus of supply inspectors, computer operators and fair

price shop owners were detected during department audit.

Fair price shop owners with their e-POS machines, computer operators and some outsiders (whose Aadhaar card numbers were misused for fake transactions) gathered at one place for multiple transactions within a few hours.

Computer operators shared the login and passwords of supply inspectors to get authentication for fake transactions of rations, he said.

The UP STF was probing the scam and had so far arrested seven persons from Lucknow and Noida.

The inquiry had revealed that over 859 Aadhaar numbers were used 1,86,000 times to siphon off rations meant for underprivileged people.