The Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Sept 8 in Delhi declared that Aadhaar-enabled Point of Sales (PoS) has been installed in 51% of the ration shops. This makes a count of 5.45 Lakhs of Ration shops and more is to be achieved by the end of the year.
An official site has been developed called www.annavitran.nic.in and will be launched soon to manage and monitor the PoS based sales. The installation of these PoS devices can bring transparency and prevent from thieving under the Public Distribution System.
Till now, around 2.68 lakhs of the ration shops are equipped with the PoS devices which comprises of 51%. The states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh have their ration shops completely installed with the PoS devices whereas, the states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan have achieved 90% of the installation.
The states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are still running low so they have to speed up their process. The PoS machines are the handheld devices which allow the Aadhaar authentication at the time of distribution, purchasing and be ensured that the beneficiaries are receiving the full advantage of these devices and receive their allocated ration. These devices can bring a new ray of hope and can help in eradicating the corruption and the emergence of the Black market in the society.
Paswan also said that; the new website has developed a system to track down sales that are undertaken via Aadhaar-enabled PoS terminals and this will provide the state and district wise transactions.
The website is still in the trial mode session, different new features are being installed to provide maximum benefits to all the citizens.
At the end of the meeting, Paswan concluded that