With an estimated two-three per cent of the total 1.39 crore beneficiaries under ‘Aata-Dal’ scheme reported to be undeserving and included in the list only due to their political affiliations with the SAD-BJP, Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Tuesday directed the department to check the list to weed out the undeserving beneficiaries.
Further, to make the previous SAD-BJP Government’s ambitious ‘Aata-Dal’ scheme “more targeted and comprehensive”, he ordered the
re-verification of the blue card beneficiaries under the scheme.
For the same, the Chief Minister has directed to link the scheme with Aadhar card. Moving a step forward, he has also announced to bring in its ambit the families of farmers who had committed suicide and the landless labourers.
The decision was taken at a review meeting of the Department of Food and Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, chaired by the Chief Minister.
It was also decided to scale up the scheme by converting the existing Blue Cards to Smart Ration Cards to make them functionally more advanced, and also to rid the existing cards of the “political tag” attached to them by the erstwhile SAD-BJP Government, which had added seven lakh beneficiaries to the scheme in the last six-seven months of its tenure.
“Many Congress workers had been denied the right to avail the scheme by the previous Government,” the Chief Minister pointed out, directing the concerned officials to sift the existing list and ensure that only deserving beneficiaries get the benefits of the scheme.
The meeting also decided that no photographs of politicians would be put on the new smart cards to be issued to the beneficiaries. Capt asked the department to define a clear and transparent system of creating and distributing the card to ensure that only genuine beneficiaries get access to its benefits. It was also decided to regularise and streamline the distribution process in view of the fact that since August 2014, dals have been distributed under the scheme quite erratically – only for the months of January-March 2016 and December 2016.