The State Food and Civil Supply and Consumer Protection Department recently released 18.68 lakh quintals of rice under the Public Distribution System (PDS) for the ration card holders.
The ration had been released for all the 27 districts of the State, officials informed.
Notably, as many as 1.83 crore ration card holder members among families are now linked to Aadhaar under PDS, officials informed.
A total of 12,021 ration shops have also been computerized in Chhattisgarh and connected using Andorid based Tablets, officials informed.
The move had been taken to further strengthen the PDS and make its functioning more transparent, officials informed.
Considerable progress has also been achieved in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan with 17,000 (99%), 11,965 (97%) and 24,649 (96%) automated Fair Price Shops (FPSs) respectively, the Central government has informed.
As a result, these States have been able to reduce ghost lifting, achieve better targeting of food subsidies by authentication of eligible beneficiaries, improvement in service delivery, weeding out bad FPSs, etc.
Notably, Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan has requested States to expedite the reforms so as to bring transparency in the functioning of Public Distribution System (PDS), which is a key feature of National Food Security Act (NFSA).
Highlighting the significant role played by Central and State Governments in ensuring food security to more than 80 crore eligible beneficiaries under the NFSA, which is presently being implemented in 34 States/UTs, Paswan requested Kerala and Tamil Nadu also to implement the Act as early as possible.
The Minister was addressing the inaugural session of the National Conference on Reforms in PDS and Computerization in New Delhi recently. He appreciated the significant efforts made by the various State/UT Governments in achieving 100% digitization of ration cards and automating 1.5 lakh Fair Price Shops across the country.