Cornered Shobha hits back at Oppn over bogus ration cards

It is usually ministers who are the butt of criticism in the Legislature. But for a change, Food and Civil Supplies Minister Shobha Karandlaje turned the tables on the Opposition on Thursday over the issue of bogus ration cards. And, she left the Opposition members red faced for trying to corner her over the issue.

During Question Hour, JD(S) member K M Shivalingegowda said that as per the Centre’s rule, each BPL card holder was entitled to 35 kg of rice. But in Karnataka only four kg were given. He wanted to know from the minister if this was not in violation of the law.

Karandlaje said the present situation was because of bogus ration cards. While the Centre was allocating food grains for only 31.29 lakh BPL families, the State was catering to 84,07,472 families. A minimum of four kg and a maximum of 20 kg of rice were given under the unit system, with each member of the family being considered a unit.

But the JD(S) member repeatedly asked her if the State was violating the Centre’s norm and added that he considered it a serious violation and that he would drag the government to court over it.

HDK’s reign

At this point, Karandlaje hit back saying that the unit system was introduced in 2006 when H D Kumaraswamy was the chief minister. “We are only continuing with the unit system introduced in 2006. We are purchasing rice in the open market and distributing it to the BPL families, as the quota fixed by the Centre is far less for the number of BPL card holders in the State.”

When the Congress members too tried to support Shivalingegowda, Karandlaje retorted saying: “In 2006, the government had entrusted the work of distributing ration cards to a private company – Comet technologies. The company which was supposed to use biometric method to identify the poor did not do that and distributed 1.92 lakh cards. All those who stood in the queue, got a ration card. Lack of rationale in the distribution by the private firm has led to the present mess,” she said. The then Food and Civil Supplies minister H S Mahadev Prasad, who is now a Congress MLA, made a vain bid to justify his action. Interestingly, none of the members said that bogus cards should be weeded out.

Snubbing the Opposition, Minister Govind Karjol said it was during the S M Krishna regime that 29 lakh temporary ration cards were issued. This was done keeping the elections in view. “There is no need to take the Centre’s permission to take administrative decisions. Ration should be distributed based on the number of family members,” he argued.

Karandlaje also said it was not possible to distribute 35 kg of food grains to each family as the State had excess cards. However, the Opposition members argued that the State should make arrangements to distribute rations for all the poor. In a written reply to a question by Ravi Subramanya (BJP), Karandlaje said as the number of bogus ration cards was in lakhs, it was very difficult to fix responsibility and initiate disciplinary action against officials.

More than 20 lakh applications have been received online for ration cards and it is very difficult to fix a deadline for completing the process of distribution of the cards.