In a holistic developmental approach, the state government has taken some significant decisions to strengthen the public distribution system (PDS) and will start supply of subsidized mustard oil and other items through ration shops across the state.

Speaking at the review meeting of the Food and Civil Supply department on Thursday at the Civil Secretariat, Chief Minister Dr Manik Saha stressed on strengthening of PDS across the state to ensure supply of food items in every house-hold of the state on a regular basis.

The Chief Minister asked the officials including all Food Inspectors and authorities of Legal Metrology to regularly visit all markets and to verify the prices of all essential food items to check hoardings. Dr Saha also stressed the importance of procurement of wheat from FCI, central government’s food distribution.

In the review meeting, Food and Civil Supply Minister Sushanta Chowdhury along with principal secretary of Revenue department Punit Agarwal, secretary of Food department Ravel Hemendra Kumar, CM’s Secretary Dr Pradip Kumar Chakraborty and director of Food department Nirmal Adhikari were also present.

During the review meeting, the secretary of Food department Ravel Hemendra Kumar highlighted the activities of the department through PowerPoint presentation and said that the department mainly working on food and public distribution, civil supply, consumer court and consumer welfare and legal metrology.

Highlighting the different initiatives of the Food and Civil Supply department, Kumar said that among 2050 ration shops, altogether 765 ration shops would be developed as ‘model ration shop’ and to implement the plan, a total of 75 ration shops from each district of the state has been identified.

He said that at present the state has 9,59,455 ration cards and soon the department will modify all these cards into smart cards.  The Food department will also set up district wise infrastructure of the department and department has started distribution of fortified rice in Dhalai district and from April, the department will start supplying fortified rice in other seven districts of the state.

At present, the state has 2050 ration shops and among these 290 are run by women and 167 run by cooperative societies, said Kumar and added that altogether 9,59,769 families have ration cards with a total consumer of 37,23,401 persons.

He said that the state at present have 3,55,439 APL ration cards and , priority household families have 4,92,485, ‘Antodhoy’ cards have 1,08,946,  1205 more families have ration cards(Priority group) under the scheme of Chief Minister  Tea workers welfare scheme.

Till now, altogether 2983 Bru (Reang) families have been provided with Antyodaya ration cards, said Chowdhury and added that the scheme of ‘one nation one ration card’ is active across the state .

Giving details of the food grain stock of the state, the secretary said that at present the state has sufficient stock of food grains and added that through ‘one nation, one ration card’, many kiln and tea garden workers are taking the benefit of the scheme.