Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan apprises Parliament panel about PDS reforms

NEW DELHI: The steps taken by the government to digitise public distribution system ( PDS) was discussed at a meeting of a Parliamentary Consultative Committee, headed by Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan.

The minister briefed the members of Parliamentary Consultative Committee about the achievements and activities of the Department of Food & Public Distribution in a meeting held yesterday.

"The members of the committee discussed issues related to improvement in TPDS-cashless arrangement," an official statement said.

Paswan informed the members about steps being taken for making PDS more effective so that benefits reach the intended beneficiaries.

He apprised about the key action plan drawn by the department including digitisation of beneficiary database, online allocation of foodgrains, computerisation of supply chain management, transparency portals and grievance redress mechanisms, Aadhar seeding, installation of ePos (electronic Point of sale) devices at all ration shops.

In line with ongoing initiative to introduce digital payments, the minister said the department has prescribed five modes of cashless payments i.e. Aadhar enabled Payment System, Micro ATM, Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), Bharat interface for money (BHIM) and e-wallet.

As many as 7 States/UTs have successfully enable digital, cashless payments using one or more of the 5 payments mode.