SC appoints bureaucrat to monitor PDS
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The
apex court on Friday appointed Secretary, Ministry of Consumer Affairs,
Food and Public Distribution, to coordinate with states and union
territories for distribution of foodgrains under the targeted Public
Distribution System (PDS) which is a massive operation undertaken by the
government to provide food to poor in the country.
A
bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra said the report of
the justice D P Wadhwa committee, which has been examining the working
of PDS, has categorically said no substantial work on digitilisation and
computerisation of PDS has taken place and bogus ration cards are being
made.
It
said that for achieving the target, the secretary will be coordinating
with state governments and union territories as it has been suggested
that the union government was not getting the adequate support from
them.
The bench said the committee had in January visited Satara district in Maharashtra
and found that the digitilisation of PDS programme was being carried
without verifying the forms and as a result bogus ration cards were in
circulation.
It
said since the computerisation programme was extremely slow, or in some
instances non-existent, there was a need for cooperation between the
Centre and state governments.
The
bench said the secretary will file fortnightly report to the apex court
on the implementation of the programme and the next report will be
placed by him before 12th March so that the hearing could take place on 15th March.
Meanwhile,
the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution
submitted an affidavit before the bench on the steps taken by it to
follow the earlier orders of the apex court regarding allocation of five
million metric tonnes of additional foodgrain to 150 poorest districts.
It
said the Wadhwa Committee has identified 174 poorest districts and in
accordance with its recommendations the ministry has so far made
additional allocations amounting to 23.68 lakh tonnes of foodgrains with
the approval of competent authority.
The
affidavit said he Central Vigilance Committee headed by Justice Wadhwa
has devised a scheme of community kitchen for providing cooked meals to
the poor living at places like city hospitals and bus stops at nominal
cost or free with the help of corporates and Public Sector Units under
their Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) programme.
It,
however, regretted the committee had received a poor response from
various ministries on the proposal of community kitchen with the help of
CSR programme.
"The
CVC addressed letters to secretaries of various Ministries of
Government of India to motivate the corporations working under their
control to participate in this endeavour.
"As
per information received from CVC, the response from the ministries has
been very poor. Only Ministry of Steel has intimated that the matter is
being examined and the decision taken in this regard will be intimated
shortly," the affidavit said.
The
affidavit also stated that a proposal to allocate 1227.4 quintals of
foodgrans per month for one year at AAY prices for the community kitchen
scheme as per the recommendations of CVC has been submitted for
approval of competent authority.
The apex court had on 14th
September last year observed that no one in the country should die of
starvation and malnutrition and it is the responsibility of the
government to provide food to the poor and asked all states to specify
how much additional foodgrains under PDS are needed to meet the
objective.
The
bench passed the order while dealing with a PIL filed by Peoples Union
for Civil Liberties (PUCL) complaining about large-scale corruption and
irregularities in the PDS mechanism.
The
apex court had earlier said all states should emulate the PDS model
adopted by Tamil Nadu which has been supplying rice at Rs 1 per kg and
subsidised fortified atta and pulses to BPL families without much
hassles and complaint of pilferage and misappropriation.
