Of a whopping 6.14 lakh cards, nearly 70% were by fair price shop dealers
Picture used for representational purpose. (Photo: DC/File)
Hyderabad: Some ration shop dealers in Telangana state are the biggest hoarders of bogus ‘Below Poverty Line’ or white ration cards; it has come to light, following an intensive drive across the state.
The drive on the directives of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao resulted in seizure and surrender of a whopping 6.14 lakh BPL cards, of which nearly 70 per cent were surrendered by fair price shop dealers.
From the seized BPL cards, the Telangana civil supplies department rem-oved names of 18 lakh people. In all, names of 37 lakh people have been deactivated from the ration records so far. “As many as 6.14 lakh BPL cards have been surrendered to civil supplies authorities across Telangana. Of this, about 70 per cent are from ration shop dealers. We have deactivated the names from the cards and cross checking with Aadhaar cards,” C. Parathasarathy, commissioner, Telangana civil supplies department, told this newspaper.
The surrendered cards are categorised as bogus cards, where persons do not exist, those of the dead, duplicate cards and cards of those, who migrated and left behind the cards. Most of the cards are in the possession of ration shop dealers and some by households including local leaders.
“We have intensified the drive on the instructions of the CM. It is yielding good results. We expect about 5 per cent to 10 per cent bogus cards from the existing 84.2 lakh BPL cards and 14.2 lakh pink cards to remain. Going by the present recovery, there could be 10 lakh bogus BPL cards left to be retrieved,” he said.
Due to intensive house hold survey, the civil supplies department officials will take a break for about a week before continuing with the drive to weed out bogus ration cards.
“We gave a stern warning to people including ration shop dealers to surrender bogus ration cards. This will ensure provision of new cards to eligible people. There are still hundreds of applications pending for new ration cards,” Mr Parathasarathy said.
Asked what action the government would take against ration shop dealers who misused the ration cards and drew ration worth crores of rupees over the years, he said it would be decided after the drive.
According to civil supplies commissioner, Mahbubnagar and Ranga Reddy districts account for the highest number of bogus ration cards among the 10 districts in the state.
To a query, he said the department was not touching the ineligible persons having BPL cards. The government has to take a decision on the issue. Whether the government would go by the data of intensive household survey or any other mode is to be seen, he added.
( Source : dc correspondent )
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