Supreme Court praises Chhattisgarh’s PDS

New Delhi, September 15

    The Supreme Court on Wednesday praised Chhattisgarh’s computerized Public Distribution System (PDS) and said it could serve as a model for the entire country.  Asking the Centre to take steps for the computerization of entire PDS to stop pilferage and corruption, a bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma said, “There is a huge pilferage and corruption in PDS and it could be reduced by computerization. This has to be done at a great speed.” The bench passed the order while dealing with a PIL filed by Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) complaining about large-scale corruption and irregularities in the PDS mechanism. 
    The direction was based on the recommendations of a high-powered committee (HPC) headed by Justice D P Wadhwa. The committee on computerized PDS, set up by the Centre, praised Chhattisgarh for doing an exceptional work on the computerization front. The committee said the state’s system could serve as a model for arrest and correct diversions, leakages, delays in allocation and transportation and distribution of food grains to fair price shops.  Chhattisgarh has all the recommendations given by the committee for states to be implemented immediately. It has created a unified ration card database, operates a web-based automated allocation of food stock procedure and provides a toll free call centre.