Till few days back all news papers were filled with reports with Delhi CM demanding Center allow home delivery of rations (food items, Kerosene etc.). That sounded like Center trying to obstruct Kejriwal from taking a step for the benefit of the common public.
All such new have now died down and Kejriwal has fallen silent after our Law Minister Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasadji announced in media that Kejriwal is under influence of Ration mafia i.e. the mafia who wanted to siphon off rations and sell them in open market.
Let me explain why the demand was raised so vociferously by Kejriwal.
After coming to power, Modi Govt has taken lots of steps to eliminate corruption in public distribution system (PDS) of food, kerosene etc. The steps are below.
- Aadhar:- Due to biometric mapping (fingerprints and eyeballs) many bogus PDS beneficiaries were eliminated. That saved tens of thousands of crores rupees. No 2 persons can have same biometrics. Say my name is X, I cannot get a duplicate Aaadhar issued in name of Y due to biometric matching.
- Point of Sale(POS) machines: In many ration shops POS machines were installed. Due to that, a person had to physically visit the ration shop, give his/her finger print and eye print and collect the ration. This stopped X from collecting the ration for Y.
- Linking of Deaths with Aadhar: Before the advent of Aadhar, ration was getting issued in name of dead persons, but due to Aadhar linkage and POS machines, no ration could get withdrawn in name of dead.
- Many corrupt ration vendors were delisted and their licenses cancelled or reallocated.
All these above steps have reduced the siphoning of the allocation from PDS systems. The amount runs to lakhs of crores a year.
Now, Kejriwal comes up with an innovative technique to loot from PDS. And that’s “Home delivery of Rations“
How that would have worked? Say there is a person X. Now (s)he has to go to the Ration shop and give his/her fingerprint. But in case of home delivery of rations that wont happen and the Ration shop owner would give the ration in the home of the beneficiary. By this way,
- If the person is not aware of his/her quota, the PDS contractor would siphon off some portion of the person’s quota and sell it in the open market.
- If a person were dead, then also ration could have been allocated and sold in the open market.
- If the ration were delivered at door step, the recipient wont weigh the amount and hence that would also act as a conduit of corruption. Say, I am allocated 5kgs of rice, the person would give me 4kgs and siphon off 1kg. Multiple this with 1 crore. This is a huge money.
This was the actual reason why Kejriwal was pushing for “Home delivery of Ration” and make it sound people-friendly though his intent was most heinous.
It is important to understand the tricks of such elements and keep them in control.
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