Food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar will inaugurate a two-day conference of state food secretaries on reforms in Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) today. The minister will also launch a pilot scheme on smart card based delivery of essential commodities under TPDS, which is being introduced in the state of Haryana and Chandigarh.
The conference will specially focus on identification of beneficiaries and avoiding inclusion and exclusion errors, timely distribution of essential commodities, ensuring actual delivery to intended beneficiaries and eliminating diversion/leakages, augmentation of storage capacity at all levels, fair and transparent selection of FPS dealers, ensuring viability of fair price shops, use of technology based applications in TPDS, community participation in monitoring, responsive and effective grievance redressal mechanism, fixing accountability at all levels and creating publicity and public awareness.
The first day of the conference is preparatory in nature where food secretaries of states/UTs shall present the best practices in vogue and the reform initiatives undertaken by them. They will also discuss the reforms required to make TPDS more vibrant and responsive to challenges. On the second day, working groups comprising state/UT officials will present their recommendations to streamline and strengthen TPDS.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman, Planning Commission; Dr C. Rangarajan, chairman, Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister and Nandan Nilekani, chairman, Unique Identity Authority of India will also be present.
TPDS works under the joint responsibility of the Central government and the state governments wherein the Central government is responsible for procurement, storage, transportation and delivery upto designated base depots in each states/UTs. It is the responsibility of respective state/UT government to lift the foodgrains allotted to them, undertake further transportation and storage, deliver the foodgrains to the fair price shop and to ensure distribution to the beneficiaries as per their entitlement.