Mizoram Embarks On Checking Fake Ration Cards

Aizawl, Aug 25 : In its gigantic step to check gross anomalies in family ration cards in Mizoram, the food, civil supplies and consumer affairs has unearthed 4,559 fake ration cards in Champhai district alone.

The task of checking fake ration cards involved making photocopies all ration cards in the district and scrutiny with the assistance of village vigilance and monitoring committee in each locality and village.

There were 36,821 persons in the 4,559 fake ration cards, department sources said.

Department director M Zohmingthangi said all the other district civil supplies offices have been instructed to conduct the same in their respective districts.

It has also been learnt that there are a number of families, who have triple ration cards of BPL, AAY and APL. It is understood that the number of people in ration cards is much higher than the actual population of the state.

According to official sources, there are 2,49,445 including 46,000 BPL ration cards and 24,000 AAY ration cards.

Assuming that there were five members in each family, the state s population, according to the ration cards, would be more than 12 lakhs, while the actual population, according to the provisional report of the Census 2011, was a little over 10 lakhs.

Informing that the department has stocked rice in all government godowns in Mizoram to last till the end of September, the director said steps are being taken to issue family ration cards based on the Census 2011.

The department director said once the Food Security Act is passed by the Parliament, ration cards would be broadly divided into priority and general. In priority ration card, each person will be allotted seven kilograms of rice per month while in general ration card, each person would get four kgs of rice per month.

The Comptroller Auditor General of India, in its report for the year ended March 31, 2010, stated that the state s food, civil supplies and consumer affairs issued excess ration cards ranging between 66,746 to 1,23,570 during 2007-2010.

As a result, Mizoram had an excess number of population ranging between 1,07,708 to 3,70,414 during the period. According to the report, the department issued 315838 ration cards against the projected 249092 number of households in 2009-2010.

The excess population, therefore, came to 370414 against the projected population of 1126067. In 2007-2008, 311203 ration cards were issued against the projected 187633, making an excess population of 107708. Even though the projected number of households remained the same in 2008-2009, the ration cards came down to 305997.

However, the population according the FRC’s jumped to 1552009 in 2008-2009. The excess of ration cards came down to 66746 in 209-2010 from 118364 in 2008-2009 and that of population to 370414 from 529637.

Whereas the Mizoram’s population, according to the FRC’s issued in 2009-2010, was 1496418, the actual population as per the Census 2011 stands at 10,91,014.