The National Food Security Act ration cards of all the 20.4 crore households covering 80.6 crore beneficiaries have been digitized with 99.8 per cent of the ration cards and 98.7 per cent of individual beneficiaries Aadhaar-seeded to plug leakages in the delivery system and enhance efficiency, the Union Ministry of Food and Public Distribution said on Wednesday.
With the implementation of One Nation One Ration Card, national portability has ensured that all 80.6 crore NFSA beneficiaries across the country would continue to receive free foodgrains on a regular basis, irrespective of the state/district from where the ration card was issued, an official statement said.
Foodgrain distribution is operationalized through 5.33 lakh e-PoS devices covering nearly all the Fair Price shops in the country. These e-PoS devices enable Aadhaar authentication of beneficiaries during the process of foodgrain distribution thereby ensuring proper targeting.
Today, Aadhaar authentication is being used for distributing around 98 per cent of total foodgrains, thereby reducing leakages to ineligible beneficiaries and that risk of any kind of pilferage, it said.
The Supply Chain Management System has been adapted and implemented for end-to-end operations and services at all levels in the Food Corporation of India (FCI) organisation, Development of Central Food Procurement Portal (CFPP) to streamline MSP operations, Implementation of Warehouse Inventory Network and Governing System (WINGS) application to automate tagging of mills with depots as well as allocation of stack space in FCI, Vehicle Location Tracking System (VLTS) innovative integration with Railways for online real time tracking of food consignment and WDRA registration of all FCI Godowns.
The government has also made extensive efforts to right targetting through the process of eKYC which authenticates the identity of the beneficiaries with their Aadhaar credentials and ration card details resulting in exclusion of ineligible beneficiaries.
Till date, 64 percent of all PDS beneficiaries have completed eKYC and the process is at full steam to complete eKYC for the remaining beneficiaries.
The impact of digitalization and Aadhaar seeding was that duplication of ration cards was eliminated, and almost 5.8 crore ration cards were struck off the PDS system to ensure no ineligible persons are included in PMGKAY/NFSA.
Through digitization, rightful-targeting, and supply chain innovations, the Government of India has set global benchmarking for state-sponsored food security initiatives. The actions by the Government of India underscore its commitment to plug leakages in the system and minimise inefficiency," the statement added.
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