Hyderabad: State Irrigation, Food & Civil Supplies Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy announced on Wednesday that the state government would begin distributing new ration cards from July 14 at Tirumalagiri in Tungaturthi constituency. The programme will be formally inaugurated by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, with Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka also participating. The Minister directed collectors to complete verification of all eligible applications by July 13 to ensure no deserving family was left out. Uttam Kumar Reddy stressed that the beneficiary selection process must be transparent and corruption-free.

“The government’s focus is to ensure that every eligible person gets a ration card without any discrimination,” he said, adding that review meetings will now be held twice a month to maintain strict oversight.

Uttam Kumar Reddy explained that Telangana’s flagship free fine rice scheme delivers 6 kg of rice per person every month to nearly 3.10 crore people, about 84% of the population, through fair price shops, at a cost of over Rs 13,000 crore annually. In June, July, and August, the state provided three months’ worth of rations at once to ensure uninterrupted supply, distributing 18 kg per person, 105 kg per Antyodaya family, and 30 kg per Annapurna family.

He sharply criticised the previous BRS government for neglecting food security and ration card enrolment. “At the time of Telangana’s formation in 2014, there were 89.73 lakh white ration cards, but the BRS added only around 49,000 new cards, mostly during by-elections, ignoring lakhs of families,” Uttam Kumar Reddy pointed out. He said the Congress government had received lakhs of new applications and was addressing them in a mission-driven manner.