Himachal Food & Civil Supplies Dept to go digital

Shimla: The Government of Himachal Pradesh will computerise its Food and Civil Supplies Department to facilitate transparency and efficiency in the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the hilly Indian state.

"All the processes right from procurement of food grains to the actual distribution to the people would be computerised," Food and Civil Supplies Additional Chief Secretary Harinder Hira said.

All the fair price shops would be provided with small computers having detail of family members, entitlement of food grains and fingerprints of all ration card holders, besides a beneficiary entry would be made automatically in the stock through the computer.

"Everyday data regarding distribution of food grains and remaining stock would be sent to the main computer installed in the District Food and Supply Controller (DFSC) office. This would prevent any manipulation of stock entries by the sales man," Hira said.

She further added that this system would be implemented on pilot basis in one of the districts and then would be rolled out in other districts.

The Additional Chief Secretary said that computerised system would be in place to monitor fair price shops operation leading to accurate distribution of food grains.

Besides eliminating bogus and duplicate cards and ration shops would have accurate stock position on daily basis and the information could be disseminated to beneficiary through various means such as voice supported system, Internet and SMS through mobile so that dealers cannot cheat consumers.

She said that it would reduce and eliminate any kind of duplicity, redundancy and discrepancy in allotment and distribution of food grains, besides checking incidence of diversions of food grains.

"Better reconciliation procedures would bring about uniformity in PDS procedures by complete integration across the state, district, block and fair price shops," Hira said.