Valid ration cards, but no supply of foodgrains in UP

Over 90 per cent of the people in Hardoi’s villages like Atwa Danda and Uttarkodh have not received regular supply of foodgrain or kerosene oil since 2002 despite possessing valid ration cards.

‘‘We saw that although cards were being filled, no ration had been supplied. Some cards had 13 columns instead of 12 for the number of months in a year, and the fair-price shop owner had filled all of them in one go,’’ said Sunil Kumar, an IIRM student camping in the village for the past few months.

‘‘The owner of the PDS outlet in Atwa Danda village, Lakshman Prasad, has a criminal background and forces the villagers to surrender their cards to him,’’ he added.

On the other hand, some of the racketeers had not even bothered to make a pretence of filling the cards. Some BPL cards, for instance, showed that only kerosene oil had been received—that too, only thrice a year. There were no entries whatsoever for wheat or rice.

The corruption does not end there. In the Antodaya scheme, meant for the poorest of the poor, the beneficiaries don’t have any valid cards. The reason: the kotedaars have cut out all the pages, only leaving the last page with their signatures on it.

‘‘These cards were distributed in April 2005 and were supposed to have been valid till 2009. But with the last page having been signed, and no pages remaining, they cannot be used anymore,’’ said Murlidhar Prasad, a villager.

Surveys by IIRM students also revealed that the district administration had released 98.4 quintals of wheat, 19.68 quintals of sugar and 246 quintals of rice to two villages—Atwa Danda and Uttarkodh—in the last two years. But none of these reached the beneficiaries through the PDS outlets, most of which open only once a month.

Meanwhile, some people were found to possess two cards—BPL and Antodaya—despite being financially well off. Social activist and Magsaysay awardee Sandeep Pandey, whose organisation Asha has been working actively in the district, admitted that PDS bungling was very common in Hardoi.

When contacted, District Magistrate K Rammohan Rao had a stock answer. Action will be taken after an enquiry into the matter, he said.