Chhattisgarh PDS unleashes an era of transparency -Governance Now

Chhattisgarh PDS unleashes an era of transparency

Samir Sachdeva | March 25, 2010

The Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection, Government of Chhattisgarh has unleashed transparency in the PDS system through the e-governance project.

The project has created a database of ration cards for over 37 lakh BPL families. The database has reduced fake and duplicate ration cards and increased transparency.

It has also created ICT infrastructure across 120 warhouses of state civil supplies corporation of Chhattisgarh. Another feature of the project is the web enabled application for automated allocation of ration to fair price shops (FPS) and online inventory management. The FPS are required to declare their stocks and sales every month and based on allocation, stock and sales figures the software calculates the amount of commodities to be issued to a FPS. In manual system there was a possibility of some FPS getting higher allotments by paying bribes, but the same has been ruled out in the software system.

The GPS technology is used to transport commodities from warehouses to shops. The GPS device tracks the location of the trucks and issues SMS alerts if truck stops on way for longer time or deviates from the designated path.

Citizens are provided with a toll free number 18002332663 for registering complaints / grievances. Citizens can also register their e-mail or mobile numbers on the website and whenever PDS commodities are dispatched for a particular FPS, an e-mail or mobile alert is sent to all the registered e-mail ids or mobile numbers for that particular FPS.

The computerization of PDS system in Chhattisgarh has helped to check diversions/ leakages in the PDS commodities and has reduced the time delay in communicating allocation to a FPS. It has also reduced fake and duplicate ration cards by providing unique number and barcode on the computer printed ration cards.

Overall it has lead to greater citizen participation and transparency.

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