The State Government has allocated 3.72 lakh quintals of rice for distribution to ration card holders of five districts in Raipur Division under Public Distribution System (PDS).This allotment has been made by Food, Civil Supply and Consumer Protection Department, officials stated.
Notably, Chhattisgarh is among only six other states in the country out of 36 states and union territories which have its supply-chain management system under Public Distribution System (PDS) completely digitized so far, officials stated.With a view to modernizing the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) the Central Government has initiated a plan scheme on ‘End-to-end Computerisation of TPDS Operations’ on cost sharing basis with the States/UTs. The scheme comprises activities, namely, digitization of ration cards/beneficiary and other databases, computerization of supply-chain management, setting up of transparency portals, FPS automation etc.
The Chhattisgarh government has also prepared a comprehensive action plan for ensuring total transparency in the preparation of ration cards besides evolving a mechanism for error-free identity of Public Distribution System (PDS) beneficiaries.Under the action plan, the mobile, bank account and Aadhar numbers of the beneficiaries are being collected.
Officials informed that data entry of details of more than 39,40,556 PDS beneficiaries have been completed out of the popular 63,51,736 beneficiaries.
Moreover, in a bid to strengthen the Public Distribution System (PDS), as many as 2653 fair price shops have been opened in the State during the past 11 years including 66 new shops in 2014-15. With this the total fair price shops in the PDS system in the State has gone up to 11111.