The Food and Civil Supplies Department has stumbled upon a major racket of linking fictitious Aadhaar numbers with bogus Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards with an intention to siphon off the highly subsidised food grains distributed under the Anna Bhagya scheme.
The department has unearthed about 1.6 lakh bogus BPL cards that were seeded with fictitious Aadhaar numbers after conducting a random verification of ration cards in the past three days.
“It appears to be a large-scale irregularity involving the government officials and owners of fair price shops. We will recommend to the government to order a high-level enquiry into it. We have also decided to get a quality check done of the Aadhaar data the department has collected from the Unique Identification Authority of India,” department Secretary Harsh Gupta told DH.
The racket came to light recently after a team of officials led by Gupta raided some fair price shops in Bengaluru.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/575504/fake-aadhaar-numbers-used-pds.html
October 15, 2016 at 12:36 pm
The racket must be investigated as the bogus cards will stop the poor and the needy from availing subsidies under PDS and large-scale black market of essential commodities might make difficult for the poor to obtain required ration.