4.39 crore bogus ration cards weeded out: Govt

New Delhi, November 6

The government on Friday said as many as 4.39 crore bogus ration cards had been weeded out since 2013 for rightful targeting of beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). New ration cards are regularly issued to genuine and rightfully eligible beneficiaries or households against the deleted ration cards, it said in a statement.

“As part of technology-driven PDS reforms across the country to modernise the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) and bring transparency in its operations through digitisation of ration cards/beneficiaries databases, Aadhaar seeding, detection of ineligible/bogus ration cards, de-duplication of digitised data, migration/deaths of beneficiaries and during the run-up to the implementation of the NFSA, a total of about 4.39 crore ineligible/bogus ration cards have been weeded out in the country during the period 2013 to 2020, so far, by the state/UT governments,” it said.

“Further, the respective quota of the NFSA coverage thus released, is being regularly utilised for the ‘rightful targeting’ of beneficiaries under the NFSA that is inclusion/addition of other genuine and rightfully eligible beneficiaries/households by issuing new ration cards to them while remaining within the respective ceiling limits of coverage defined for each state/UT under the Act,” it also added. — TNS