Aadhaar has helped in replacing 99 lakh bogus beneficiaries from Public Distribution System (PDS) with the help of Aadhaar-enabled PDS (AePDS), claimed Government of Maharashtra.
The process of filtering the genuine cases and omitting the fake ones will continue for few months, said Girish Bapat, Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, Government of Maharashtra.
“When we started linking the ration card with Aadhaar numbers, we found that thousands of names were either duplicated or bogus and many of these beneficiaries had died long before, but foodgrains were drawn in their name,” said the Minister.
Reportedly, one-month implementation of AePD has helped in removing 99 lakh bogus names. These will now enable replacing these with 99 lakh people who deserving candidates under the Food Security Act.
This correction will help the State Government in saving Rs 4,200 crore.
“The AePDS helped the state to filter the system as centre has fixed state’s quota to seven crore people to be covered under the Food Security Act 2013. The coming months will filter the ration card database further,” the Minister.
