Ration at your doorstep likely

New Delhi: If things go well, the beneficiaries under Public Distribution System (PDS) in Delhi might get their rations at doorstep. In this context, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has asked the officials to work over doorstep delivery of ration to the beneficiaries in Delhi, saying that this will make the process of getting ration too easy and the beneficiary will not have to go anywhere.

The Chief Minister Kejriwal Tuesday was taking a review meeting of the PDS of ration to the beneficiaries of Delhi. The Chief Minister along-with other Ministers and officials also saw the demonstration of the ration vending machine and the biometric system tablet machines (PoS machines) for ration shops. "The vending machine will be calibrated with the vending machine. The biometric machine will recognise the beneficiary and send the command to the vending machine to vend the amount of ration to be vended to a particular beneficiary," said Chief minster official.

Kejriwal said that once installed the new system will solve the problems of theft of ration and quantity of ration to be given to the beneficiaries. The biometric system will recognise the beneficiary through his/her thumb impression, picture and Aadhar card, while the vending machine will dispense the exact allocated amount of ration after biometric check of the beneficiary. The meeting was attended Cabinet Minister, Manish Sisodia, Rajendar Pal Gautam, Imran Hussain and Chief Secretary of Delhi apart from other senior officials.

As per the complaints, there are many ration cards which are being used by these PDS owners for their personal consumption. "Some of the owners are taking undue advantage of their post and due to which genuine residents are being deprived of this facility," added the government official. At present, more than 72.78 lakh beneficiaries are covered for drawing ration as per entitlement in Delhi.

The Department has issued guidelines from time to time in order to ensure that targeted ration beneficiaries get their due amount of specified food articles in time.