Fake ration card scam exposes in Delhi; Probe order issued

After the exposition of numerous fake ration cards, the Delhi Government on Tuesday ordered an impartial investigation into the scam, which has siphoned off a subsidy amounting to about Rs 250 crore in the past four years.

The Delhi Food and Supplies Minister Haroon Yusuf, ordering the probe into the matter said, “We will be carrying out a probe and harsh action will be taken against the guilty people.

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We will target the Public Distribution Mafia with whose support these fake cards have been made.”

He said that the Government would ensure delivery of food grains under its Public Distribution System to the targeted beneficiaries. Providing food, ration and other basic family requirements to the actual people living below poverty line at the cheapest rate is in the prime agenda of the government. No discrepancies in this matter will be tolerated. Guilty people must be punished, he said.

The government had suspicion about the bogus ration cards. In recent periods many such cases have come into light after Food and Supplies Department of Delhi Government started investigation and found discrepancies in the name and address of the ration card holders. “The government is committed to eliminating all fake ration cards in the Capital. We are, in fact have started taking the help of technology. The government has already launched software to root out the fake cards. With computerisation of the data base of all the ration cards, we will be able to wash out the illegal ration cards.”

The matter, according to the government was in its notice but had not expected at such large scale, got precipitated after an NGO named Parivartan claimed on Monday that essential items were being sold out in black market as a huge number of fake cards were in circulation for over the last four years. The unbelievable, but astonishing fact is that exact 900 cards have been issued in the name and address of one owner. The irony is that the owner himself is unaware of multiple ration cards registered on its name.

It is a fact that many brokers and ration shop owners are involved in making fake ration cards. For one such card they charge about Rs 700. But, the revelation of such a massive fake cards certainly point towards the fact that this could not have been possible without a strong nexus of food and supplies officials, fair price shop owners and others.

After Arvind Kejriwal, the RTI activist and the owner of Parivartan, revealed data of the fake ration cards, the government accepted the scam and ordered probe a day later, on Tuesday. The Minister said a total of 1,70,598 fake ration cards were detected and of these 11,256 were of Antodaya Yojana (AAY) category,17,364 of Below Poverty Line (BPL) category and 1,41,978 of Above Poverty Line (APL) category.

Delhi as a whole has 15 lakh APL cards and about four lakh BPL cards. Ten percent cards of these have been found fake. The Minister said that Government recently had discredited 10 lakh APL cards and thus the figure reduced from 25 lakh to 15 lakh.

The Minister said the Delhi Government had computerised all the data base related to consumer's identification and during the process of computerisation of the records, the fake ration card scam has come in limelight.