Hyderabad: The Telangana State government has decided to issue “Telangana citizen cards”, a multi-purpose card, to ensure that the welfare schemes offered by the government reach the real beneficiaries. The cards will be issued by taking up “door-to-door verification” along the lines of issuing the passport.
Meanwhile, passport-type verification process will also be taken up for issuing new ration cards in Telangana soon. This is to check bogus ration cards that have surpassed total households in the state.
The Telangana government has decided to abolish the existing ration cards issued in the united AP state and issue fresh cards with “TS logo” from next month. In the process, it wants to weed out existing bogus cards, by taking up “door-to-door verification” along the lines of issuing of passports.
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who held a meeting with the officials of the civil supplies department at the Secretariat late on Thursday, directed them to issue ration cards only after visiting and inspecting each and every household.
He said the government will conduct random inspection of households later to verify whether the cards issued were genuine or bogus by crosschecking the details of cardholders.
He warned that the officials concerned will be held responsible, if bogus cards are found during random inspections.
“The existing ration card issuing system is a big scam. There are 22 lakh cards in excess when compared with total households in the state. We got a good opportunity to weed out bogus cards now with the formation of Telangana state as cards have to be issued afresh. We should not lose this opportunity,” he told the officials.
He said if bogus cards are eliminated, the government can save thousands of crores of public money, besides delivering subsidised food items to poor and needy efficiently.
