Now, a 'rational' way to weed out bogus cards

It is now mandatory for people to disclose their RR numbers for cards

With a view to check the menace of bogus cards, the State Government has now made it mandatory for people to disclose their RR numbers to obtain new ration cards (Above Poverty Line cards) in urban areas, including city corporations like Bangalore. For those in the rural areas, disclosure of the property tax assessment number has been made compulsory.

The ESCOMs, including Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM), issue RR numbers soon after sanctioning new power connections. The RR number is mentioned in the monthly power bills of all consumers. Hitherto, the Government was issuing ration cards based on address proof.

Why RR number?

All ESCOMs have complete database of their consumers, especially in urban areas, and they easily locate their consumers using this number. The Food and Civil Supplies (FCS) department has decided to link its ration cards to RR numbers and thereby identify and weed out bogus ones, official sources in the FCS department said.

Similarly, the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department has compiled a database of all properties (residential) at village level across the State. The list of properties along with their numbers has been already uploaded in the department’s website. This database is being used to verify the authenticity of ration cards in rural areas, including BPL cards.

Presently, there are 1.64 crore ration cards (1.07 BPL cards and 57 lakh APL cards) in the State. Of these, about 50 lakh cards are estimated to be bogus cards. The State Government is spending a whopping Rs 80 crore per month to provide ration at subsidised rate to these card holders.

The FCS department has embarked on the new clean-up exercise, as its project to issue bio-metric ration cards to weed out bogus cards flopped. The task of taking fingerprints of members of all families, issuing ration cards and creating a computerised database was entrusted to Comat Technologies in 2006. But, ironically, instead of the number of ration cards coming down, it surged by another 50 lakh in the last two years, official sources said.

With the pressure of food subsidy mounting on it day by day, the FCS department has now decided enough is enough with bogus cards. It has already taken up the task of matching the existing ration cards with RR numbers and property numbers in a big way. The work is expected to be complete in about two months. Once done, the FCS officials will do the physical verification of properties of families which have more than one ration card, officials said.

Clean-up act

* Disclosure of RR number issued by Escoms must to get new ration card in urban areas, including Bangalore
* In rural areas, one must disclose property number
* Govt to verify the authenticity of existing cards using RR and property numbers
* By doing so, it wants to identify bogus cards and weed them out
* New exercise taken up after efforts to issue biometric cards failed