Delhi: Policy for doorstep delivery of ration notified

A government official said that people will have to specifically give consent for inclusion in the scheme. The registration process will be rolled out in a week

The Delhi government has notified a policy document which prescribes the modalities of the doorstep delivery of ration scheme – an initiative that can potentially make monthly ration more accessible to 1.75 million households in the Capital, exempting families from long queues at fair price shops.

Representational image. (PTI)

The document, which HT has seen, said: “The scheme will be optional, and an option shall be taken from the beneficiaries of the existing TPDS [targeted public distribution system] in Delhi, as to whether they want to enrol under the scheme or continue under existing TPDS. Those who are not opting for the scheme shall continue to get their ration as per existing mechanism and price. Beneficiaries will be able to exercise option in the beginning of every financial year.”

On January 25, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said that the scheme will be operational by March.

Earlier, the proposed scheme had been designed to automatically include all ration beneficiaries in the city unless they chose to “opt out” of it by responding to a specific text message sent by the food and civil supplies department within a 10-day window, said a report published in HT on February 13.

A senior government official said, “We received feedback that suggested that the auto-inclusion process, which provided beneficiaries 10 days to opt-out by responding to a text message sent by the government could confuse people as well as agencies entrusted with the doorstep delivery. So, the process has been simplified. Now people will have to specifically give consent for inclusion. The registration process will be rolled out in another week.”

The scheme document, that was notified on February 20, detailed the process. It said foodgrains will be collected from food corporation godowns by agencies empanelled by the government and sent to mills wherein grains such as wheat will be processed into flour and packed. Similarly, there will be units for ther cleaning and packing of rice too. The packets will be delivered to fair price shops and from thereon to residences of beneficiaries who opt for the scheme.

The beneficiaries will have to register the receipt of the ration with their fingerprints on the biometric-based electronic point-of-sales (e-POS) machines, which representatives of the agencies entrusted with doorstep delivery will carry. The entire operation will be monitored from the godown stage to the doorstep through CCTV cameras, GPS-fitted vehicles, e-POS logs, etc, said the document.

Delhi has 1.75 million ration card holders, which translates to 7.16 million beneficiaries, according to authorities. Of the total ration card holders, 1.51 million are covered under the priority household category of the National Food Security Act, 2013, while 0.17 million are covered under priority state household category, and the remaining 0.07 million come under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, show government records.

While those under the first two categories are entitled to 5kg of foodgrains a month, those under the third category are entitled to 25kg wheat, 10kg rice and 1kg sugar every month. These items are distributed to them from 2,010 fair price shops that are currently functional across the city.

The project was cleared by the Delhi Cabinet in March 2018 but could not be rolled out because of several administrative issues, some of which even led to stand-offs between the elected government led by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and officials in charge of the department. Some of the administrative issues pertained to legal provisions under the food security law, which took more than one year to be resolved, said a senior government official.

The project was given a fresh push ahead of the assembly polls in Delhi in February 2020 and a pilot run for three months was conducted in five municipal wards of north Delhi. In July 2020, the new Cabinet gave fresh approval to the project.