Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Chowdhary Zulfkar Ali conducted field visits of various automated fair price shops in Ahmadabad to get on ground operational knowledge of e-PDS in the state so that similar technology can be applied in J&K.The Minister who was accompanied by officers of J&K State, Officers of Food Department Gujarat and Collector Ahmadabad, conducted visits in the city where he checked automation operation of the Fair Price Shops. He met people visiting FP Shops and also held deliberations with Ration Dealers and sought information on the automated machines installed by the Gujarat Government.The Minister was briefed during the visit about the online services, Offline services of automated machines, SMS services and grievance portal. He was given in detail presentation about the working of Point of Sale Machine. The Minister also visited various stores of civil supply material besides Automobile oil shops. He was also briefed about AADHAR and OTP system, offline transaction through local ePDS database, billing compliance through SMS.
The Minister took stock of the “successful implementation of Electronic Public Distribution System (ePDS)” in the state and said that such system has brought total transparency. He said that Gujarat government has implemented ePDS in highly efficient manner where the system is benefiting consumers by minimising the chance of pilferages.The minister said that the aim of such visit is to get information about ePDS and end to end computerization so that the similar revolution is brought in J&K state.The Minister said that in Jammu & Kashmir all fair price shops will be provided a system having biometric machine that will allow the real beneficiary to get ration without any delay. He said that the system will also generate an electronic slip mentioning the details of the beneficiaries, like rate and quantity of ration delivered. He added that beneficiary will also receive an SMS alert. Simultaneously, the beneficiary’s account will be debited on the database of the main server.He added that the aim of the Mehbooba Mufti led government is to ensure that the last beneficiary in the row gets the benefit through end-to-end computerisation. He added that soon PoS is going to bring big revolution in the state and this system will completely change the perception of the Department.