Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday launched a sharp assault on Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, calling his plans for doorstep supply of meals rations within the nationwide capital a “jumla” (a false promise) and accusing the ruling Aam Aadmi Party of links to the “ration mafia”. The CM just lately wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, interesting for the scheme to be accepted after it was blocked by the Centre final week. The AAP authorities says the plan would assist round 72 lakh individuals within the metropolis who’ve been hit arduous economically due to the Covid lockdown.
Why can’t the Kejriwal authorities undertake the Centre’s ‘one nation, one ration card’ scheme, Prasad requested. He identified that thus far solely three states — West Bengal, Assam and Delhi— have failed to take action.
The verbal skirmishing over the scheme is the newest episode of a long-standing turf tussle between the AAP authorities and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the Centre that share duties within the nationwide capital.
The union ministry of meals, civil provides and shopper affairs launched a detailed assertion on why the doorstep supply of ration scheme was turned down. Questioning the intent of the Kejriwal authorities behind the plan, the ministry in its assertion stated, “Firstly, sure acts of the Delhi authorities have been giving doubts about transparency, motive/intention of the Delhi authorities” and “secondly, the said notification/proposal of the Delhi government seems to be at variance or are in conflict against some of the essential features of the NFSA which has come through an Act of Parliament”.
It goes on to clarify that although there may be scope for flexibility when it comes to implementation, nonetheless the options of the notification of the Delhi authorities can’t be accommodated throughout the current National Food Security Act (NFSA). It factors out that the Delhi authorities appears to be taking out the honest worth outlets, a primary pillar of the NFSA, of the general public distribution system.
The central authorities has stated it’s a matter of concern that the Delhi authorities stopped utilizing the digital level of gross sales (ePoS) system throughout all ration outlets in April after implementing it for 4 months. In reality, on June 8, meals and shopper affairs secretary Sudhanshu Pandey had written to Delhi chief secretary Vijay Dev, asking for the latter’s intervention for the “expeditious resumption” of the ePoS devices in all fair price shops of Delhi for transparency in distribution of food grain and ensure the implementation of ‘one nation one ration card’ at the earliest. The union consumer affairs ministry has said that when the whole nation is moving towards a transparent authenticated system of ration distribution, even in areas where the network and broadband connectivity is low, the Delhi government’s action of stopping ePoS was baffling and still remains so.
During the four months that the ePoS system was implemented in Delhi, the central government said that more than four lakh bogus ration cards were weeded out. It went on to ask, “Did Delhi government get perturbed about weeding out of illegal ration cards?” It additional requested that when virtually 30% of all transactions in ration outlets in Delhi have been “portability transactions”, implying that people were beginning to avail its benefit at any new locality they were shifting into, why did the Delhi government not think about their welfare when it stopped the ePoS plan? Why should the city with perhaps the highest availability of broadband services and network activity have shockingly zero ePoS transactions when states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh show almost 100% biometric authentication ration delivery, and even in states in the Northeast, more than 80% to 90% of ration is delivered is via the ePoS, the Centre asked.
In yet another charge questioning the intent of the Delhi government, the union food and consumer affairs ministry pointed out that when last year central agencies had inspected 72 fair price ration shops across Delhi and of the 130 samples collected, almost 90 were found to be substandard. The Centre had written to the Delhi government for action to be taken against those particular ration shop owners, but nothing happened. It termed the argument that substandard ration had come from central agencies an “eyewash”. “The proven fact that so many samples have been discovered to be substandard from simply 72 of the two,000 ration outlets in Delhi factors to the truth that some unlawful nexus of changing good high quality ration with substandard ration inside Delhi was/is current,” it argued.
“Well established and highly popular transparent system of ration distributed to the poor people of India, is now being planned by the Delhi government to be dismantled, bypassed and substituted by something which is not transparent and possibly of entrenched with one centralised distribution mafia, which is now only going to make life miserable for the weaker sections of Delhi,” the ministry stated.
The union authorities is not only suspicious of the intent of the Kejriwal authorities, it has additionally alleged that exhaustive groundwork and thorough considering has not gone into the planning of the doorstep supply scheme. For occasion, there isn’t a readability on the selection of the ration that a beneficiary has, or what number of occasions does a beneficiary must say whether or not it will be wheat or wheat flour ( atta), it says. How would the Delhi authorities ask for the desire from 72 lakh beneficiaries each month and why is the Delhi authorities bypassing the present ePoS-enabled community of ration outlets with a centralised supply mechanism by means of a contractual company, the union authorities requested. In case, the company that has been contracted to ship the ration on the doorstep of the poor defaults, what’s going to occur to the meals safety of the poor, the Centre desires to know.
Terming the BJP “Bharatiya Jhagda Party”, implying it had a quarrelsome nature, Delhi deputy chief minister asked why, when pizzas can be home-delivered, the same cannot be done with ration. Nation-building will happen when the Centre works with the state governments, not by fighting them, he said on Friday.
The central government says that “replacement of well spread out mohalla/locality based ration shops with some kind of centralised distribution is not acceptable”. Further accusing the Kejriwal authorities of falling prey to the ration mafia, the ministry says, “The mafia which is on the run within the nation particularly within the public distribution system is now seemed to be being introduced again in by means of another again channels. The actions of the Delhi authorities over the last three years on this entrance appear to be pointing to the identical.” As per the NFSA, doorstep delivery means delivery to fair price shops as defined in the Act, which is at variance with the notification of the Delhi government. The ministry has also termed the comparison of delivery of ration to the delivery of pizzas “irrational”.
The central authorities reiterated that it has no objection if a separate scheme is made with out mixing components of the NFSA.
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