Flaky system turns PDS defunct in city

More than 1 lakh families in Delhi have been denied access to the food grains under the government-run public distribution system - touted as an insulator for rising inflation - because of technical snags for over two years, the Central Information Commission found. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 23, 2011, 24:14:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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More than 1 lakh families in Delhi have been denied access to the food grains under the government-run public distribution system - touted as an insulator for rising inflation - because of technical snags for over two years, the Central Information Commission found.

The number includes about 70,000 Below Poverty Line (BPL) families, who are, according to the rules, entitled to 25kg foodgrain every month.

The rest, about 44,000 families, are above poverty line (APL) who get ration at a rate cheaper than the market prices.

"Government policies appear to be the victim of a completely inefficient computer system," information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said in an order on Monday.

The revelations came in a reply to a Right To Information application, filed by a man, Amlesh Gupta, with Delhi government's department of food and civil supplies, seeking details of the families having ration cards and not getting foodgrain under the government policy.

To Gupta's application, the department informed that rations were stopped to 44,172 APL card holders, as the department failed to enter their names in the database since 2008.

The Delhi government, in 2008, allowed APL families with an annual income of less than Re 1 lakh to get ration cards for buying foodgrain at a fixed rate. Under that, 44,712 applications were accepted for issuing ration cards. However, no ration was distributed as their names were not entered into the database.

"The respondent states that this has happened since the computer systems are not working properly and connectivity is unreliable," Gandhi said, calling the explanation "scandalous".

"It is scandalous that since computer systems and connectivity is not proper the 44,712 families in Delhi which should get rations at a fixed rate are unable to get them," he said.

The department also informed the CIC that about 70,000 BPL cardholders were also not getting ration because of the inefficient computer system.

Gandhi, in his order, had directed the food commissioner to send a compliance report about the action taken on disenfranchisement of over 1 lakh families from the public distribution system.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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