SRINAGAR: Availing ration through traditional paperback ration cards will become history as the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs department will switch over completely to the digital mode maintaining records of consumers online with they in future receiving ration through smart cards.
Switching to digital mode has led the department to eliminate duplicate ration cards prevalent in the system with till August this year the department leading to automatic cancelation of nearly 34,000 (thirty four thousand) ration cards from the department portal.
The consumers according to officials can avail ration through biometric mechanism that is inbuilt in the PoS machines available with the fair price shops of the department where in their statement of ration received will be maintained. The consumers will also get a proper receipt of the supplies received after due payments.
Director of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs (FCS&CA), Bashir Ahmad Khan told the Kashmir Reader that smart cards will in future replace traditional ration cards and till they are received by the consumer, they can easily avail the ration through FPS through PoS machines.
“In these POS machines all the details of the ration card holders including his family members are stored as they are linked to the department portal which is hub of this info,” he said adding that all the process is now switching to paperless so there is no need of printing and distributing ration books.
He further said that this mechanism when implemented will bring more transparency in the food distribution system.
The department in near future is also introducing the smart card to consumers for availing ration that will be linked with the Aadhar card.
Khan said that it is mandatory for the consumers to link their Aadhar details of families members to department portal, that will ease process of ration availing and its prompt delivery.
He added that Aadhar linking has helped the department to eliminate automatically thousands of rations cards after consumers had availed them at different places.
The programme is initiated under the GoI “One Nation, One Ration Card” system in which consumers can collect the ration from any part of the India using the smart card based ration delivery mechanism.

ARIF RASHID