The decision to conduct e-KYC for all the ration card holder of Jharkhand is expected to cost in the tune of Rs 2.5 crore to the Government.

The UIDAI responding to the proposal of the Department of Food and Civil Supplied has quoted the figure for the purpose.

Secretary with the Department Amitabh Kausal confirmed this, besides talking about several other measures that have been mulled and would be implemented in near future in order to weed out the fraud beneficiaries.

“We are going for electronic-KYC for all the 57,000 card holders in the State like it is being done for getting mobile SIM. This would be done at Pragya Kendras or also with our machines with the dealers. IT Department has suggested the two options to us for rolling out the mechanism,” said the Secretary.

He added that since the decision needs not to go to the Cabinet for approval it would be implemented this month itseld. “We don’t have to do any capital expenditure for it. The UIDAI will be charging Rs 1 for each e-verification. That need little over Rs 2.5 crore to cover every name mentioned into the ration card,” said Amitabh Kausal.

The Department has been on cleansing spree from quite some time through self-surrender, intelligence gathering in field and cross verification so that the demand for issuing more ration cards under the FSA can be met to some extent. It has even weighted the option to change the criteria set for the eligibility.

“We have brainstormed over the idea to remove those having motorcycles from the list of beneficiaries. Data from the all the District Transport Officials were also sought and received. Though it could not materialised considering the huge number of probable exclusions,” said the Secretary.

Also, the Department is also working to call self-declaration from the beneficiaries every year unlike once which is in practice at present. “This is being done since dynamics and realities keep changing. When we have to rely on self-declaration only this need to be made as robust as possible,” he said further.  

Feeling overburdened with number of applications flooding in from ration claimants the State Government has decided to go for conducting e-KYC of all the existing beneficiaries under the Food Security Act, 2013. The mechanism would help the Department of Food and Civil Supplies to weed out ghost card holders and those who are non-existent.

It is learnt that that the mechanism has been opted after the State Government received no respite from the Center to its repeated proposal to raise the quota of the State in terms of number of the beneficiaries.

Minister Saryu Roy had written the Department to approach the Center. But in a meeting with the Union Food Secretary on this issue he categorically said that the State Government should work on removing illegible, non-lifters and also the non-existent persons from the list to create the space.

“The sense we are getting that raising quota of ration cards for Jharkhand alone is not possible as it has not been done for any other State so far,” said a senior official.