From Our Special Correspondent

Daijiworld Media Network

Bengaluru, Oct 22: With complaints of massive fraud by a large number private fair price shops in the newly introduced ration coupon system in the public distribution system in Karnataka, has forced the State Government to seriously consider shutting down all the private fair price shops.

Linking of the public distribution system to Adhaar numbers had enabled the helped the State Food and Civil Supplies Department to detect bogus ration coupons.

About 1.60 lac bogus ration coupons have been detected already.

These coupons are spread across 953 fair price shops in the State with Bengaluru city top the list with about 400 shops involved in the irregularities.

Sharing these details with reporters in Bengaluru on Friday, Karnataka’s Food and Civil Supplies minister UT Khader said two persons have already been arrested and criminal cases have been filed against the accused for creating fake food coupons.

Deputy Commissioners of all the districts have been instructed to initiate action to detect
bogus coupons and initiate legal action, Khader said.

There are about 20,000 fair price shops of which about 12,000 are run by private persons.

"We are seriously considering a proposal to close these private fair price shops and running them through the co-operative societies," Khader said.

Answering questions from reporters regarding the distribution of new ration cards, the minister said that the process would be launched soon and attributed the delay to technical issues. These would be sorted out soon, he assured.

There is also a proposal to issue temporary cards for the poor to enable them to avail medical services being offered for the BPL families, he added.