Ration cards are issued to BPL (Below Poverty Lines) families to avail the subsidies on food grains but according to the sources families which are Above Poverty Lines (APL) do also found having the ration cards but many of them do not make use of it to avail the subsidized food grains from ration due to the poor quality of the stuff. Government has now decided to cancel such ration cards which is expected to be more than 1 lakh in numbers.
According to the news published by the Navhind Times daily “Families which are having above poverty line ration cards under the high-income group status and are not utilizing it, but merely holding on to them as address proofs, stand the risk of their cards being cancelled”. Accordingly the department of civil supplies has invited applications from the households whose annual income is above 5 lakh and they are not using the PDS (public distribution system) to procure the subsidized grains. The decision in this regards came to into action on the backdrop of food security programme to make sure that the food grains being made available to the poor population in subsidized rates across the nation including Goa. 5.32 Lakh beneficiaries have been identified under this and process to roll out National Food Security Act in the state is in full swing.
To avoid any further complications the department has set the deadline for submitting the ration cards of APL to their respective fair price shops by and before 31st August 2015 failing to which their ration cards will be excluded from PDS. Vikas Gaunekar who is the director of civil supplies had told the media that “we have started a drive to get rid of unused and bogus ration cards so as to make available the left out quota of 25000 tonne of food grains annually under food security Act to the needy APL ration card holders.” He also added that all the APL ration cards whose family income is below 5 Lakh will not be excluded from the PDS and the same will be headed by the eldest member of the family and subsequently the names of ration card holder whose income is above 5 Lakh will be removed from the PDS after they submit the undertaking along with their ration cards.
“We have received 1.40 lakh applications under NFSA of which around 20000 applications will get rejected since it doesn’t fit the income criteria and there are more 2 lakh APL card holders whose income is above Rs 50000 that will be included after they apply for the same,” said the director of civil supplies. He also informed that the two forms C & D will be made available at all FPS and Taluka offices wherein the Form C will be for those families whose annual income from all sources is upto 5 lakh and Form D for lower income groups respectively.
It has been noticed that despite of directives from the central and state government mentioning not to make use of the ration cards for the purpose of address proof the ration card is mentioned as ‘optional address proof’ in the ‘necessary documents’ column of the application form for a passport, Aadhaar card, learning license, all government certificates and to open a bank account. The system takes time to adopt the changes in our country. Government spends lots of money in advertisement / hoardings to create the awareness but still in vain. People are educated but do not want to adapt to the change. This mentality needs to be changed to take our nation ahead of the time. In case you also hold the RATION CARD and your income is above 5 Lakh it is recommended to surrender the same so that the real beneficiary takes the advantage of the available schemes. Please do not forget to leave your comments and suggestions on this issue.
Source: The Navhind Times
