Each person would have to show a government ID proof and get his/her finger inked to avail the two kg onion per head in Telangana.
Indelible ink, Aadhaar card and kilometer-long queues - that's what it takes to get onions in Telangana today. This, of course, applies to sarkari onions, subsidised by the Telangana government at Rs 20 a kilo.
The alternative is to pay the market price -- Rs 60 to Rs 70 a kilo. Which, of course, is far cheaper than Delhi, where the pungent vegetable is available for nothing less than Rs 80.
Each family is entitled to 2 kgs of onion every time you brave the queue and the weather.
The indelible ink - which is normally used during voting - has been used on Sundays to ensure that no one cheats and gets more than their quota. As with voting, it is applied on the index finger of the right hand.
The loophole? Long queues and an inordinately long waiting period, points out buyers.
"It is a very good scheme. But it does take long. The waiting time is up to two hours sometimes, but it worth it,'' said Bhuvaneswari, a housewife living in Secunderabad.
Admitting to the long queues, T Ramesh Kumar, the assistant supervisor of Hyderabad's Alwal Rythu Bazaar, said it was a regular problem despite keeping the open "from 8 in the morning to 8 at night''.
To manage the lines and the counter, the weighing and selling takes at least eight people. "Adding one more counter would ease the lines, but we have a staff shortage. Already, many have been deputed here from elsewhere,'' he explained.
Every day, around 4.5 tonnes of onion is supplied to the market, one of about half a dozen in the city. A couple of extra tons are given during weekends because there is more demand.
Onion prices have skyrocketed since August, to counter which, the Centre is importing onions from Afghanistan and Pakistan and most state governments have been selling the vegetable at subsidized rates.