Hyderabad: The Telangana government is all set to delink white ration cards with welfare schemes once it starts issuing new ration cards with the ‘Telangana logo’ from September.
The linking of white cards with fee reimbursement, scholarships, Aarogyasri etc. during the Congress regime between 2004 and 2014 had led to large scale bogus ration cards with their number surpassing the total number of households in the state.
The repeated attempts by the government to check bogus ration cards failed to yield desired results due to their linking with welfare schemes. Bogus card holders did not surrender their cards even after repeated warnings from the government.
Telangana government feels that if white cards are delinked with schemes, it will automatically check bogus cards as there will not be a heavy demand for white cards. As per civil supplies department figures, there are a total of 1.47 crore ration cards in Telangana. Of them, 91.94 lakh are white ration cards and 15.07 lakh are pink cards. However, the total number of households in the state as per Census 2011 was only 84.20 lakh.
Besides, there are another 41 lakh Antyodaya cards (green cards) issued by the Centre since 2000, to provide 35 kg of rice and wheat at just Rs 3 and Rs 2 respectively. These figures indicate that there are an excess of 22 lakh ration cards in the state when compared with total number of households proving beyond doubts that large number of bogus cards were issued by successive governments.
Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has been putting in serious efforts to eradicate bogus ration cards.His warnings seem to be working out with over 1.15 lakh bogus cards being surrendered voluntarily by ration dealers during the last two weeks. These bogus cards alone cover 10 lakh of the population.
“A massive drive to weed out bogus cards at ground level will be taken up across the state in August. Officials of civil supplies department have been asked to conduct house-to-house survey to identify bogus cards by August-end,” said Etela Rajendar, the minister for civil supplies.
“If we implement National Food Security Act with existing bogus cards, it will impose an additional burden of Rs 1,000 crore on the state exchequer. We will seek six months’ time to implement it from the Centre,” said the minister.
