New software to correct ration card errors

Mangalore, March 9: Ration card woes may finally come to an end with the state government deciding to empower the department of food and civil supplies to handle all future transactions related to preparation and disbursal of ration cards in the state. This process was hitherto outsourced to Comet Technologies and the government a month ago terminated the contract given to the company and decided to go in-house.

Vrushabarajendramurthy, deputy director, department of food and civil supplies, told media persons here on Tuesday that four-stage verification is on at the gram panchayat level using the panchatantra software. A survey of tax-paying households with ration cards, non-tax paying households, card holders not residing in the gram panchayat, and people not having a ration card but residing in a gram panchayat limits is being surveyed in this verification.

The state government at the same time has decided to provide the department with necessary paraphernalia such as personal computer, web camera, scanner, printer, and bio-metric identification devise to each of the taluk offices in the district as well the informal rationing area (IRA) of City Corporation where the process of issuing ration cards in the future would be handled. "We have received instructions to set aside a furnished room for this," he said.

What this localised set up in the IRA and taluk centres would mean for the people, he said would be that based on the final set of government guidelines, various mistakes that have crept in the process of issuing ration cards would be dealt with locally. The complaints received by the people include a change in their economic category status, mismatch in gender, relationship to the owner, age and other issues that are proving to be irritants.

C N Manjunath, Mangalore tahsildar, who fielded questions from members of Mangalore taluk panchayat on this issue at their maiden general meeting here, later told media persons that his office has taken the onus to issue certificates to people who faced mismatch in ration cards issued to them. Department of food and civil supplies should get its operation of correcting and issuing fresh cards subject to government directions from this month end, he added.