Centre asks states to adopt Karnataka PDS model

Urged states to adopt bio-metric system

The Karnataka government’s plan to set up bio-metric machines at all fair price shops and computerisation of transport and delivery of foodgrain to prevent pilfering has received laurels from the Centre.

The Union Ministry of Food and Consumers Affairs, which is working hard to plug the leakages in the public distribution schemes, has asked other states officials to visit Karnataka and try to adopt the system undertaken by the State’s Food and Civil Supplies Department.

Karnataka Food and Civil Supply Department secretary B A Harish Gowda recently made a presentation on the new system to the Union ministries of finance and food and consumers affairs officials here.

Food and Consumer Affairs secretary Rajiv Agarwal, who chaired the state food secretaries meeting last week, advised the states to visit Karnataka to adopt its model.

As the Centre is working on rolling out food security scheme at the earliest, it wanted the states to adopt bio-metric based system to check leakages in the foodgrains distribution system.

Karnataka has introduced electronic weighing-cum-point of sale machines at fair price shops where the beneficiaries — both below poverty line and above poverty line card holders — will have to register by giving thumb impression. At the time of purchasing foodgrains, the  beneficiary has to give thumb impression again. The data of the transaction will be transferred to the central server soon after the beneficiary finishes buying.

The biometric machines have been designed in such a way that they will have a record of number of ration card holders, opening and closing stock for each day, total quantity of foodgrains received from the department’s godown at the beginning of the month and total quantity sold to card holders at the end of the month. All the machines are connected to the central server located in Bangalore which will be monitored by the department directly.

Apart from this, the transportation of foodgrains from the Food Corporation India godowns to state-owned godowns and subsequently to fair price shops has been computerised. Each lifting of foodgrains by various agencies from godowns and its dispatching and billing has also been computerised and it can be monitored from Bangalore.

Currently, the system has been introduced at 103 fair price shops in Bangalore city and Tumkur district. It will be introduced in all 23,000 fair price shops in Karnataka, the state government informed the Centre.