Denial of Rations

Why in news?

Recently Supreme Court asked the centre to respond to a PIL alleging that ration cards were cancelled due to insistence on Aadhaar linkage.

What are the findings of the survey related to this?

In 2019 National Election Study (NES), people were asked whether they had been denied food grains due to non-possession of Aadhaar or failure of biometric authentication.
Based on the responses from the ration-card (RC) holding households, it turned out that one in four households were denied food grains due to such issues.
Moreover the frequency of such denial was on rise that has raised the concern over food security.
Ever since Aadhaar-based biometric authentication was introduced in PDS, people complain about fingerprints not getting confirmed, no backup of iris poor Internet connection.
This has forced people to spend on another trip to the shop.

What are the other findings in the survey?

This seeding and authentication problems not only occur in remote areas but also in urban areas.
In rural areas, 28% of respondents belonging to RC-holding households were refused ration due to Aadhaar-related issues and in urban areas this was around 27%.
In both rural and urban areas, the poorest were worst affected – 39% of households whose monthly income below Rs 2,000 -were at some point denied PDS ration due to Aadhaar problems.
There was a striking difference noticed based on the responses of the Hindi-speaking heartland states vis-à-vis the other states.
In the Hindi belt-‘Bimaru’ states- as many as 40% of RC-holding households reported a denial of ration due to Aadhaar issues as compared to 20% households in the rest of the country.
The problem was less due to non-possession of Aadhaar and more due to biometric authentication and server issues.
In states like Bihar, Jharkhand, MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh the situation is as grave as the NES data suggests.
The proportion of RC-holding households who were denied ration due to Aadhaar-related factors was: Rajasthan-36%; Chhattisgarh, -39%; MP& Jharkhand- 40%; Bihar, high as 56%.

Source: The Indian Express