Minister for Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, Choudhary Zulfkar Ali today said the District Development Commissioners (DDCs) will identify, in their respective districts, eligible households to be covered under priority category of NFSA.Chairing a high-level follow-up meeting here today to review roll-out of NFSA in the State, the Minister emphasized upon the officers to complete the beneficiary categorization process in a fair and transparent manner at the earliest.“Categorization of priority, non-priority and APL families should be done in accordance with the criteria to be devised by the DCs keeping in view the socio-economic profile of each district,” Zulfkar said.As per the criteria set by the CA&PD Department for distribution of rations under NFSA, families in present AAY and BPL list, households with meager income, houseless and landless persons, widows, orphans, destitute, violence affected families in low income group, leprosy patients, domestic house maids, nomadic families, old age pensioners, slum dwellers and any other deserving family identified by the competent authority would come under the priority category. Such families will get rations at highly subsidized rates.
Reiterating the importance of this ambitious initiative, Zulfkar said the government is determined to put in place a foolproof and transparent mechanism for achieving optimum results under NFSA. He asked the officers to focus on maintaining accuracy in identification of real beneficiaries so that no deserving is left-out.The Minister called for constituting district, tehsil and village level committees to collect the beneficiary data as per the set guidelines. He instructed all Deputy Commissioners to submit a certificate to the effect that 100% coverage has been made in the districts at the time of submission of lists to the department.The Minister further said that Aadhaar-ration card linkage is not mandatory in the beginning as major chunk of rural population are not even enrolled for Aadhar seeding yet.
He asked the Secretary CA&PD to place an amount of Rs 5 lakh each at the disposal of all DDC s for completion of identification process at the earliest.“Under NFSA, only priority households and extremely poor families constituting about 74.13 lakh souls (63.55% rural and 47.10% urban populace) are entitled to subsidized food-grains. However, we have decided to continue PDS (Public Distribution System) for other 45 lakh ration card holders comprising priority and non-priority households,” he said.The meeting was informed that work on end to end computerization and digitization of data and printing of new ration cards are in the advance stage of completion for effective implementation of NFSA.The District Development Commissioners and officers of CA&PD Department attended the meeting.