More than 12,000 people have voluntarily surrendered their ration cards in the district, till 4 July following the directive of Bokaro Deputy Commissioner Mukesh Kumar.

Taking sturdy initiative Kumar asked the officials to cover the needy people or beneficiaries in the scheme in lieu of the surrendered ration card earliest. Kumar also directed the officials to identify those people who are wrongly lifting ration through ration cards, and ensure legal action against them.

Despite giving sufficient time to surrender, a lot of ineligible persons or affluent persons are still having ration cards. We are on move to take legal actions against such persons after identifying them earliest, said District Supply Officer.

“Any family member having vehicles including two-wheelers, Any family member having business with TIN (taxpayer identification number) or pays Income Tax, Service Tax or Sales Tax, Any member employed with Central or State Government, Family having Air Conditions, Refrigerators or Washing Machine, Family having more than five acres of irrigated land or ten acres of normal land, Family having a three-roomed concrete house, Family having agriculture apparatus running on four wheels are ineligible to get AAY ration cards,” added the official.

“There are still a large number of ration cards, which were grabbed by the ineligible beneficiaries have to be surrendered before the district administration,” said an official. If any affluent body found having the AAY card, stringent action would be taken and 10 times values of the food grains would be recovered with all interest form them, said the official.

Last year in 2019 all total 5490 ineligible ration cards under Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) were surrendered and deleted following the directive of the deputy commissioner, he informed.