Tripura Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath has stated that his government has detected over 60,000 fake ration cards and around 2,90,000 fake beneficiaries of the Public Distribution System (PDS) during a digitisation drive. He also said that the state government was focusing on digitisation and e-government services to curb corruption and bring accountability in public services.
“We conducted a verification through a digitisation drive and found that 62,340 rations cards and 2,90,776 PDS consumers are fake,” Nath said on Wednesday. In Tripura, ration cards are given to an entire family including the names of all the members instead of an individual.
During the erstwhile Left regime, a total of 9,62,046 ration cards were registered with the state food department. But the current government found only 8,99,706 cards to be genuine. During CPI(M) rule, 39,40,277 beneficiaries of the PDS were registered with the government but after the digitization drive, the incumbent government found only 36,59,501 to be authentic.
During its campaign, the BJP had promised to increase social security pension benefits. “We promised to hike social security pension benefits in our Vision Document. At the same time, we are also trying to identify fake beneficiaries”, Nath told reporters.
