City govt hits back at BJP over food security

100 pc enrolment under Aadhar, says supplies minister

On a day when the Centre told the Supreme Court that securing Aadhar cards, being issued by Unique Identification Authority of India, was optional and it has not made it mandatory for the citizens, Delhi government on Monday said it is not likely to have any impact on implementation of the Food Security Scheme in the city.

In order to prevent delicacy, the Delhi government had linked issuance of the Food Security Cards with Aadhar numbers of the applicants mandatory.

“First of all, Delhi has reached almost 100 per cent enrolment under Aadhar. Even if Aadhar is not allowed to be mandatory, we have several other data like that of the property tax department of MCDs, the electricity connections, records from transport and the income tax department to weed out ineligible beneficiaries,” said Haroon Yusuf, Delhi Food and Civil Supplies Minister.

The minister said the department has engaged National Institute of Smart Government, Hyderabad to put in place a biometric based system in each Fair Price Shop (FPS) for authentication of beneficiaries and distribution of foodgrain. 

“The system is likely to be in place in next six months. It will be connected to the central server of the department as well as to Aadhar server and will have facilities like biometric reader, barcode scanner, smart card reader and printer and will monitor all transactions at the FPS,” the Minister said.

“This will help in prevention of diversion and as well as ensure distribution of foodgrain at the prescribed rates and quantity to the beneficiaries,” he said.

The minister slammed the Opposition BJP for alleging corruption in implementation of the Food Security Scheme and that people are being fleeced in name of buying forms and submitting them.

“Around 40 lakh forms have been made available across 200 department offices and 120 GRCs. Moreover, awareness campaign is also being conducted through hoardings and public announcement at different places. The opposition is making baseless allegations,” Yusuf said.

“The allegation regarding bad quality food being distributed is also false as the officers are regularly visiting fair price shops to check the quality of food,” he said, adding that around nine lakh families have already applied for cards under the Food Security Scheme.
Creating awareness

In a bid to create awareness about the application process, he said the department has put up 200 hoardings across the city and was also making public announcement through 140 autorickshaws. “Also to reach out to transgenders and marginalised women, the government was taking help of NGOs working with Mission Convergence for door-to-door distribution of applications and helping the people in filling up and submitting them,” he said.