Ram Vilas Paswan the Union Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution briefed the members of Parliamentary Consultative Committee about the achievements and activities of the Department of Food & Public Distribution to in New Delhi, yesterday.The Members of the Committee discussed issues related to improvement in TPDS-cashless arrangement. Shri Ram Vilas Paswan informed the MPs about steps being taken for making TPDS more effective so that benefits reach the intended beneficiaries. Shri Paswan also apprised the membres about the key action plan drawn by the Department Food and Public Distribution which inter alia includes Digitization of beneficiary database, online allocation of food grains, computerization of supply chain management, Transparency Portals and Grievance redress Mechanisms” Aadhar seeding, installation of ePos (electronic Point of sale) devices at all FPSs across the country under the FPS automation programme, DBT Scheme for foodgrains.In addition of the above, the Shri Paswan said that in line with ongoing initiative to introduce Digital Payments. Department of Food & Public Distribution is prescribed 5 modes of Cashless Payments i.e. Aadhar enabled Payment System, Micro ATM, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Bharat interface for money (BHIM) and e-wallet as on 21.02.2017, 7 States/UTs have successfully enable digital, cashless payments using one or more of the 5 payments mode.The meeting was attended by Shri Balabhadra Majhi (MP, Lok Sabha), Shri Bijoy Chandra Barman (MP, Lok Sabha), Shri K. Ashok Kumar (MP, Lok Sabha), Shri Kanti Lal Bhuria(MP, Lok Sabha), Shri Rajesh Kumar Diwakar(MP, Lok Sabha), Ram Prasad Sarmah (MP, Lok Sabha), Shri Balwinder Singh Bhunder (MP, Rajya Sabha) and senior officials of the Ministry.