The Food and Civil Supplies Department has streamlined the process of online application for ration cards.
The department has already processed over 14 lakh of the total 31 lakh applications and has issued over 53,000 ration cards.
Sources said that another 27,500 ration cards are ready with the department and applicants have been sent SMS to receive the cards.
In the process the department has rejected over 4.2 lakh applications. “Many of the rejected applications were cases of duplication. Many had applied multiple times and only one application was accepted and the rest were rejected.
Other applications were rejected as the applicants already possessed ration cards. We cannot issue multiple ration cards to one family,” said Mr Harish Gowda, principal secretary, Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Karnataka.
The slow speed of processing ration cards since the department had invited online applications had come under criticism from various quarters. The process, however, has picked up pace in last two months.
Mr Gowda cited lack of manpower for conducting mandatory field inspections as the reason for the process to be time consuming.
“There is no way that field inspections can be skipped. This is the most crucial part of the process. Each of the 31 lakh applicants has to be verified, but we have limited manpower,” he said.
The online process has also strengthened the department’s on-going efforts to weed out existing ration cards that are illegal. “During the process of verifying new applicants, many illegalities in the existing cards were found and this added to cancellation of existing cards.
The department has cancelled 33,51,823 till Saturday. We are unearthing and cancelling more ration cards every day. I expect that another 10 lakh ration cards will be cancelled in the process,” Mr Gowda added.