Here is one more effort by the State Food and Civil Supplies Department to check bogus ration cards.

The department is coming out with a new, tamper-proof ration cards, using a technology called ‘Visual Cryptography’.

“The new ration card has been designed in such a way that neither the shop owner nor any department official can misuse it,” said Commissioner P N Srinivasachary.

Under this technology, identity of a particular ration card will be hidden in codes under a combination of black and white dot patterns at the back side of the card (which is in technical terms called as private key). The code can be read only by using specially designed encrypted dot patterns (which is called public key).

“Only when the encrypted dot patterns (public key) are properly aligned on the the black and white dot patterns on the card (private key), one can read the code. This code differs from each ration card,” Ashim Roy, Vice-President, Technology, Comat Technologies, which has invented the new technology, said.

While all ration cards will have dot patterns, the owner of the fair price shop will be provided with a small plastic sheet which will have encrypted dot patterns. What the shop owner has to do before giving away the ration, is to read the code of the ration card using encrypted dot patterns and write it down on a sheet of paper.

Every month, the shop owner has to send the list of codes (list of people who have taken ration from the shop) to the department, which will, in turn, crosscheck whether the list of codes furnished are genuine or not.

Moreover, the shop owner will be provided with different encrypted dot patterns every month. With this, the code of every ration card will also change every month. “This will keep the identity of a ration card hidden, and it is impossible to even guess the code of any card. This will prevent any misuse of ration cards,” Srinivasachary said.

He further said that misuse of PDS, under which food grains are provided at highly subsidised rate by the government, is rampant at this level. Though most of the ration card holders do not buy food grains from fair price shops, the shop owners procure the entire supply from the Government and, in turn, diverts it, illegally. So far, there was no mechanism to check it effectively, he added.

According to Ashim Roy, the ration card cannot be duplicated as it will have a unique water mark. “One can easily make out the photocopy of a card. None of the water marks will appear on the duplicate one. Over and above, the hidden code will not appear on a fake card,” he added.

Hi-tech ration cards
The Commissioner said that the department will soon start issuing tamper-proof, computerised ration cards. The date is yet to be finalised. “We have identified 73.29 lakh below poverty line families and 37.6 lakh above poverty line family for this purpose,” he added.