Goyal bats for SMART-PDS system adoption

NEW DELHI: Food and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said that SMART-PDS is a technological driven initiative and the need of hour, so all the states should make earnest efforts to implement SMART-PDS at the earliest.

He said this while addressing a conference of states’ food ministers. Goyal emphasised on a transparent and accountable system, aimed at reducing human intervention and promoting automation in the existing processes.

SMART-PDS is a system where smart ration cards are issued to beneficiaries of public distribution system, and ration is given through fair price shops on production of the smart ration card by any member of the beneficiary family. The fingerprint template of the beneficiary is recorded in these smart ration cards, which records all transactions.

Meanwhile, Goyal further said transparency should be of utmost importance for free supply chain of foodgrains under public distribution system. On the storage front, Goyal stated that Food Corporation of India (FCI) is upgrading its godowns into five-star rated ones and states should follow suit.