A special campaign will be held on April 24 to collect information about bank accounts of eligible families under targeted public distribution system (PDS) in the urban areas of the State. For this, Food and Civil Supplies Department has issued directives to district collectors. In Madhya Pradesh, there are 26 lakh eligible urban families. Of these, information about 13 lakh families is available on Samagra Portal.
Under the campaign, information about fair price shop-wise eligible families will be made available on departmental website www.food.mp.gov.in and another list of NIC containing details of the bank accounts which are registered in the name of more than one family in the database. The department has directed to appoint one in-charge on 100 families for this campaign. They would also be imparted training. The in-charge officers will carry out campaign through door-to-door visits.
Information collected during campaign will be entered by May 10. The National Information Centre (NIC) will provide list of all such dubious families for deletion from database. Directives have been given to apprise public representatives regarding the campaign. Notably, this exercise has been initiated after the Government had received several complaints regarding leakage of products under the PDS. It was alleged that the PDS shop owners had been misusing the number food-grains received from the Government for distribution among the urban poors. After updating the records of the bank accounts of the beneficiaries, it is believed that the irregularities in the PDS could be checked effectively.