Gurdaspur: Villagers lose smart ration card on 'frivolous' grounds

Ravi Dhaliwal

Gurdaspur, August 6

Mandeep Singh (8) of Daburi village has never held a toy gun in his life. District administration officials, however, think otherwise. Their contention is that he possesses an arms licence of a real gun. Subsequently, his family’s smart ration card has been withdrawn.

Smart cards, which empower the beneficiary to get 5-kg wheat per month, are prepared in the name of the eldest woman member of a family. To avail this benefit, the entire family’s annual income should be less than Rs 60,000 or it must own less than 2.5 acres of agricultural land.

Many anomalies have surfaced in the district during the re-verification process of the smart cards done recently. The cards are being cancelled citing totally frivolous reasons. This means genuine beneficiaries are being deprived of their quota of ration.

The re-verification had been ordered by the AAP government following complaints that rich families had been availing of free rations during the previous government’s regime, thus depriving the poor (the real beneficiaries) of the benefits.

The cards of Rakesh Kumar and Rupy of Daburi village, too, have been cancelled. The official contention is that Rakesh is a government employee. The hard fact, however, is that he is a daily wager. As for Rupy, officials say he owns an air-conditioner. The reality is that he is a labourer and lives in a one-room ramshackle tenement that has no roof.

Jaspreet Kaur and Manpreet Kaur, both government school students in Daburi, are being shown as government employees. Free ration stocks of their families have been suspended.

In Kot Todar Mal village, of the 402 beneficiaries, 172 have been excluded citing reasons like “beneficiaries have ACs installed in their houses, are government employees or possess arms licences.”

Daburi and Kot Todar Mal are symptomatic of scores of villages where beneficiaries have been wrongly excluded.

The re-verification modus operandi entailed a massive exercise. Officials were supposed to physically verify the beneficiaries. But physical checks were never undertaken. The process was conducted by teams of different departments.

Deputy Commissioner Himanshu Aggarwal said the beneficiaries, whose cards had been erroneously withdrawn, could approach his office. “Deserving people will not be excluded,” he said.