Mumbai Congress President Sanjay Nirupam on Thursday slammed the Maharashtra Government and alleged that its new rules under Public Distribution System (PDS) are depriving the beneficiaries of getting their rations because they don’t have their Aadhaar card linked. He appealed to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to rectify the government’s mistakes.
The state government’s circular mentions that if the Aadhaar card of the beneficiaries - under the PDS scheme - is not linked with their ration card, they won’t get food grains from the ration shops.
Reacting to this, Nirupam informed that the Maharashtra Government is violating the Supreme Court’s order on Aadhaar Card. SC, while hearing the petition in January 2017, said that the linkage of Aadhaar Card is not mandatory for providing a subsidy.
Out of the 54 lakh ration card holders, approximately 21 lakh beneficiaries do not get ration for their daily requirements,” he further added.
Nirupam narrated that the biometric (EPOS) machines used by the ration shops to link Aadhaar with ration cards are not appropriate and serves no purpose as it doesn’t work most of the times. He further informed that the machine often doesn’t work and has a 2G connection in the world of 4G.
Modi’s Digital India is failing,” he said.
"The machine at this shop hasn’t been working properly for past many days and we have a complaint about it too but no action has been taken as of now,” one of the ration shop owners in Colaba.
EPOS machines ask for the thumb impression from the beneficiaries to check if their Aadhaar is linked or not.
Nirupam also informed that the data entry process of the registered Aadhaar Card is also slow. Some of the ration card holders have an Aadhaar but only 50 per cent of the data has been entered in the system. Thus, the Aadhaar number of the beneficiaries doesn’t reflect in the machine.
Government is punishing the poor people for its mistakes,” he added.
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