Hyderabad:
Suvarna has to put in extra hours to make ends meet this month. On her ration card, she will get just half a kg of
tuar dal at a time when the pulse is selling at 100 rupees a kg in the market.
"The half kg will have to last a month. How is that possible?'' asks Suvarna, a tailor.
The government has slashed
dal given to BPL families on the white card from one kg to half while increasing the issue price from 30 rupees to 45 rupees a kg. That is because there are over two crore white cards, many of them bogus, in the state and the government is unable to either ensure supplies nor can afford the huge subsidy bill.
"We have to make available 20,000 metric tonnes every month. That is 2.5 lakh metric tonnes annually whereas the production in the state is itself two lakh metric tones,'' said Sanjay Jaju, Andhra Pradesh civil supplies commissioner.
Taking average family size at four, the BPL population in the state works out to over eight crore - that's as much as the total population of the state.
At a time when the state's financial resources are scarce, weeding out ineligible, bogus cards has become the biggest challenge. Because the white card is the principle document not just for the highly subsidised
dal and rice, but also several other welfare schemes.