As of January 18, about 1.92 crore smart cards have been issued. With a total of 1,94,16,372 households in total, that leaves around 1.47 lakh pending family cards. There are primarily two issues that the department and the public are facing, namely pending cards and errors in the cards already issued. With the minister stating that smart cards would be made mandatory for buying ration commodities from March 1, the ones who face trouble with their card remain an anxious lot. 

“There are three categories of pending cards. The ones without photographs forms the first category, which makes up for most of the pending cases. Chennai and neighbouring Tiruvallur top the list,” said an official. 

In these cases, added the person, they were reaching out to the family card holders through calls and SMS. The next category are ones where the Aadhaar card linked to the smart card does not have the date of birth of the head of the family. These add up to about 15,000 cases. 

“It is necessary to determine the age in Priority House Hold (PHH) cards, which are issued against the name of the eldest women member of the family,” the official said. Last category are the ones without Aadhaar details of the head of the family, where the department is awaiting inputs from family members and vendors. 

There are about 12,000 cards in this. When contacted, S Madhumathi, Commissioner, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Department, told DTNext they were taking all efforts to reach cent per cent coverage by reaching out to the card holders. “The PDS roster is also being continuously updated,” Madhumathi said.

The other issue is the mistakes and goof ups in the smart family cards that were already issued. In some cases, the images of popular film stars and even deities figure as the head of the family. 

After media reports highlighted such gaffes, opposition members took up the issue during the recent assembly session. Defending his department, food minister Kamaraj said the fault was on the part of the card holders and their families. 

The department had permitted families to upload the photographs from their smart phones using TNEPDS mobile app. “It is not a mistake on the part of the government, but a mischief played family members who uploaded these pictures through the app. The system processed it automatically,” he said. 

Officials said the salesmen at PDS shops were flagging such cards, following which corrective measures are initiated. Colachel MLA JG Prince raised another serious issue. 

For instance, there is a column where the food department officials have to specify the category of the household, whether it falls under Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) or Priority Household (PHH), which come under the ambit of National Food Security Act (NFSA). 

Most of the commodities disbursed through PDS is provisioned based on these categories. “As the verification process was not done properly, many wealthy families received these cards, while the eligible ones were left out,” Prince told DTNext. 

Food Minister Smart cards would be issued to all ration card holders before March 1, food minister K Kamaraj said on Sunday. “Ration items would be given only through Smart cards from that date,” he said.

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