The Department of Food and Civil Supplies has initiated steps in the direction of retrofitting the existing Aadhaar-based PDS machines with iris scanners. It is learnt that the Department has sought report from the Assembly following the orders for issuing tender would be placed to the JAP-IT Department.

On its part, the Department has begun some primary level assessments which conclude that the entire fleet of the machine used for disbursal of food grains to the targeted beneficiaries need not to be replaced with the new one and instead would be attached with iris scanner into the existing one.

“There are iris scanners in the market which can be attached with the Aadhaar based machines used at the PDS shops. We would publish tender as soon as the direction comes from the Department,” said IT Director Umesh Prasad Shah.

Food and Civil Supplies Minister Saryu Roy while agreeing to the lapses existing with the machines in use had declared in the Assembly that iris scanners would be introduced all across since the additional data of eyeball is already with the UID. The announcement had come after some members raised issue of the considerable number of rural populace being deprived of their monthly ration since the machines in use were unable to read their depleted thumb impression required to verify the biometric details of the beneficiaries.

“I have told the Department officials to expedite things in this direction which is yet to finalise a proposal in this regard. I have also consulted RS Sharma (TRAI Chairman) who said that iris device would also fasten disbursal of commodities to the beneficiaries. A small device would be connected with the machines in use without much hustle,” said the Minister expressing hope that in the next 2-3 months the iris scanners would be supplied with.

There are nearly 20,000 machines installed across the PDS shops in the State which had been pressed into action only previous year to stop pilferage of ration meant for BPl and Antyodaya beneficiaries. The step holds importance since more than 2.25 lakh population of the State has been covered under the ambitious Food Security Act.

However, the department is of the view that entire fleet of the Aadhaar-based biometric machines are not needed to be fitted with iris scanning feature. “We are starting a survey to locate the villages where the problem of the machines not reading thumb impressions is acute. Since this problem primarily persists in rural pockets we would be targeting those first,” said Secretary of Department Vinay Kumar Chaubey.

He also referred to some facts suggesting that not more than 10 per cent of the machines needed to be retrofitted. “look, about 88 per cent of beneficiaries are lifting their ration regularly and other 2-3 per cent are about to be removed from the list since they have not turned up for taking the ration. This apart there is an option of mobile phone based OTP as well if thumb impression fails. So there would not be more than 2000 odd machines which needed to be equipped with iris scanners to begin with,” added the Secretary, saying that the Government would bear the additional cost coming on purchasing the eye scanners.