Ujjain: Give up your BPL cards: State Food Commission chairman tells affluent people

Ujjain: A cleansing process to streamline actual number of beneficiaries under four flagship schemes of the Union and state government is now underway. State Food Commission chairman Rajkishore Swai said here on Wednesday that district collectors and food departments have been given three months to rectify the list of beneficiaries.

Swai and members Kishore Khandelwal, Gorelal Ahirwar, Veersingh Chauhan, Snehlata Upadhyay and Durga Dabar discussed the formation, functions and rights of the Commission in a discussion with the media at the Simhastha fair office. Swai said that people who were affluent should remove themselves from the BPL list. He stated that even those people with a tractor, jeep and 10 ‘bighas’ of land were taking advantage of the rupee one per kilogram of grain scheme, which was unjust. He further said the commission would direct the collectors of all districts to take action against such people and charge one and a half times of the profit earned by them as fine. He said that 39,000 people gave up their BPL card during a campaign in Sagar division. It is necessary to run such public awareness campaign in all the districts, he added.

Swai also said the State Food Commission’s office in MP Satpura Bhavan had been set up on July 20, 2017. The Commission had been entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating and analysing four major schemes, the public distribution system, supplementary nutrition diet, mid day meal and maternity welfare scheme. It was also the job of the commission to advise the state government and local bodies for better operation of these schemes. The collector has been declared district complaint redressal officer by the State government for complaints received in respect of the schemes. If a person or beneficiary is hurt by the order of the district complaint redressal officer, he has the right to appeal to the commission.

According to the policy of the government of India, 75 per cent of the population of the state was to be given benefits under the National Food Security Act, but 80 percent of the people were benefitted by getting wheat, rice and salt at a concessional rate of Rs one per kg. Under the Maternity Welfare Scheme, pregnant women were being given six thousand rupees in three installments. The mid-day Meal Scheme is operated to give hot food to all children studying in primary and secondary government schools.

Kishore Khandelwal said that on the request of the Food Commission, the state government had issued instructions that if the thumb impression machine failed to function, food should be given to the consumer on the basis of Aadhaar card and an entry of the same should be made in the register. He said that under the National Food Security Act, it is mandatory for the concerned departments to provide a list of beneficiaries on their respective web sites. Public distribution system shops will be opened in every rural panchayat by the end of January. Instructions have been given to set up boards in all public distribution system shops.

Prior and after the press conference, meetings were organised by the commission at the Simhastha Fair Office to attend to complaints and grievances related to the public distribution system, nutritional food and mid day meal. Complaints were heard and instructions were given to solve the problems. At the meeting, members of the commission, divisional commissioner MB Ojha, zila panchayat president Mahesh Parmar, food controller RK Vaikar and various departmental officers, representatives and public were present. The food commission chairman gave instructions to the food department officials to activate the monitoring committees of the public distribution system, give information of allocation of food grains to beneficiaries through SMS and display the status of complaints on the Chief Minister Helpline.

He explicitly stated that monitoring committees should be operational from January 1, failing which strict action will be taken against officials of the food department. At the meeting, mayor Meena Jonwal said that in case of divorce or separation of husband, the ration card is unfairly kept by the husband and women do not get ration. Corporator Santosh Vyas talked about non cooperation of authorities in monitoring the public distribution system and said that making BPL cards is often time consuming.