KCR snatches rice bowl from kids?

Children below 5 years are denied monthly ration

• Protests witnessed near rationing offices
• But the govt promised 6-kg rice for a person without any ceiling
• Ration card applications increased beyond govt expectation
• TS govt facing difficulty to bear subsidy burden
• Officials believe that children do not consume 6-kg rice
• A lot of discrepancies noticed in family data in PDS system

Hyderabad: The efforts of the state government to streamline the public distribution system seem to have landed the state government in a major mess.The government, which wanted to weed out the bogus cards and increase the quota of rice from previous 5-kg a person with a ceiling of 20 kgs per family to 6 kgs per person irrespective of number of family members, is now finding it difficult to bear the subsidy burden as the number of applications for ration cards has increased much beyond the government’s expectation.

In order to cut down on the subsidy, the government decided to remove the names of all those children who are below five years of age. This has led to protests at all the area rationing offices in the city. Interestingly, the government has not issued any GO to the effect but has issued oral instructions. According to B Ramesh Babu, working president of Telangana Ration Dealers’ Association, the civil supplies authorities have issued unofficial instructions not to give rice for children below five years.

Talking to The Hans India, Ramesh Babu said that when they asked the officials they were told that there were many benami names of children included in the applications for the cards and the government also felt that children in the age group of 1-5 do not consume six kilos rice a month. According to the Economic Survey 2014, the malnutrition levels in Telangana are at the higher end of 43 per cent among children below 6 years and over 80 per cent among adults.

There is a high incidence of malnutrition among children less than 60 months. However, an official on the condition of anonymity said that lot of confusion had arisen during the process of data entry as it was done in a highly unprofessional manner. There were a lot of mistakes in the data.

He confirmed that names of children below five years were removed from the dynamic key register (DKR), which is online list of all the beneficiaries. During DKR, the age mentioned on the old ration cards were taken into account. If a child was of two years at that time, now he must be over 8 years but still his name has been deleted for they have taken the child’s earlier age. The government to avoid bogus cards had decided to link the cards with Aadhar cards. This is where the confusion began.

For example if the name of a women was Chandravati in the Aadhar card while submitting the application, the women who is generally an illiterate must have told the writer that her name was Chandramma. As this did not match with the details of Aadhar card her name was removed.Similarly, there have been many cases where the numbers written by the applicants could not be deciphered properly and hence they did not match with the Aadhar cards that appeared online and hence they were denied coupons.

According to M Srinivas, Secretary CPI-M, the decision of the government to deny rice to children below five years was highly condemnable. This inhuman decision had put thousands of poor families in severe distress. This is nothing but denying the subsidy to the deserved, he said.

By:Ramu Sarma