AAP govt detects ‘ration theft’, asks L-G to act

Several instances of multiple ration cards registered with one phone number have been reported by the Food and Civil Supplies Department, prompting the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government to suspect theft of ration and to ask the Lieutenant-Governor (L-G) to take action.

Addressing a press conference on Friday, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia announced that the government had unearthed large-scale “theft of ration” that look place in March. He added that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Food and Civil Supplies Minister Imran Hussain had written to L-G Anil Baijal seeking action.

The Delhi government had rolled out Aadhaar-linked e-point of sale (e-POS) devices at ration shops in January, Mr. Sisodia said.

Anticipating inadequate Internet connectivity and failure to authenticate using biometrics, the government had made provisions for an alternative. If biometric identification failed, a beneficiary could give the ration card number or Aadhaar number to generate a one-time password (OTP). Using the OTP sent to the beneficiary’s phone number, the shopkeeper would be able to issue the ration.

OTP started in March

The OTP option was not implemented in January and February, but started in March after people started complaining of issues with biometric identification. In his letter to the L-G, Mr. Hussain said that he received complaints about the “misuse of the OTP” system and on March 21 asked the department for the details of all transactions made through OTPs. He said the department suspended the OTP system the same day and gave him the details 10 days later.

“It means that the department knew that the OTP system was being misused and as soon as I asked for the data, fearing that their wrongdoings would get exposed, they suspended the OTP system on their own,” wrote Mr. Hussain to Mr. Baijal.

Upon preliminary investigation, the data showed that “ration has been siphoned off” in March, with the ration cards appearing to be fake. For instance, 499 ration cards were found registered with the same mobile number, meaning that the OTP would be generated and sent to the same number. Around 41,000 transactions in March used the OTP system, said Mr. Hussain. In addition, ration was issued to 1,549 ration card-holders that were registered with 11 phone numbers.

Moreover, many of the phone numbers that were used for OTP generation were found to be in a sequence. For instance, 85 mobile numbers between 844816728 and 844817832 were used successfully for OTP authentication.

“All these indicate that the present system of e-POS has been misused on a large scale last month to issue ration on bogus ration cards,” said Mr. Hussain, adding that these cards were issued in 2013 and 2014.

Asking Mr. Baijal to suspend Food and Civil Supplies Commissioner K.R. Meena till the investigation is done and the e-POS system till the problems are addressed, Mr. Hussain’s letter was also signed by the Chief Minister. They also asked Mr. Baijal to reconsider his decision to forward the AAP government’s proposal for home delivery of ration to the Centre.