Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday ordered re-verification of the list of Blue Card beneficiaries of the Atta-Dal scheme to make it more targeted and comprehensive, while directing it to be linked with Aadhar card and bringing in its ambit families of farmers who had committed suicide and landless labourers.A decision to this effect was taken at a review meeting of the Department of Food & Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, chaired by the Chief Minister.It was decided at the meeting to scale up the scheme by converting the existing Blue Cards to Smart Ration Cards to make them functionally more advanced, and also to rid the existing cards of the political tag attached to them by the erstwhile SAD-BJP government, which had added 7 lakh beneficiaries to the scheme in the last 6-7 months of its tenure.
With an estimated 2-3% of the total 1.39 crore beneficiaries reported to be undeserving and included in the list only due to their political affiliations with the SAD-BJP, the Chief Minister directed the department to check the list to weed out the undeserving beneficiaries. Many Congress workers had been denied the right to avail the scheme by the previous government, the Chief Minister pointed out, directing the concerned officials to sift the existing list and ensure that only deserving beneficiaries get the benefits of the scheme.The meeting also decided that no photographs of politicians would be put on the new smart cards to be issued to the beneficiaries.The Chief Minister asked the department to define a clear and transparent system of creating and distributing the card to ensure that only genuine beneficiaries get access to its benefits, according to an official spokesperson.It was also decided to regularize and streamline the distribution process in view of the fact that since August 2014, dals have been distributed under the scheme quite erratically – only for the months of January-March 2016 and December 2016.