Parliamentary panel asks Centre to speed up digital overhaul of public distribution system
New Delhi: A parliamentary standing committee on consumer affairs, food and public distribution has asked the Centre to accelerate the rollout of the ₹349.9-crore Scheme
New Delhi: A parliamentary standing committee on consumer affairs, food and public distribution has asked the Centre to accelerate the rollout of the ₹349.9-crore Scheme for Modernization and Reforms through Technology in Public Distribution System (SMART-PDS) programme. It said the next phase of reforms should focus on building a unified, real-time digital platform capable of improving beneficiary targeting, strengthening supply-chain monitoring and reducing leakages in India's food subsidy programme, which has nearly 800 million beneficiaries. The recommendations come after the Centre completed the first phase of digitisation of the public distribution system (PDS). Under the initiative, around 205 million ration cards covering nearly 800 million beneficiaries have been digitised. Also Read | Handloom weavers' insurance scheme falls short of enrolment target The report noted that these reforms have also resulted in the deletion of 67.7 million duplicate or ineligible ration cards between 2013 and December 2025, thereby improving the targeting of food subsidies. Chaired by DMK MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, the panel said that the department of food and public distribution should ensure time-bound implementation of SMART-PDS across all states and Union territories, complete integration with agencies such as the Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and other ministries, and establish national dashboards, command-and-control centres, cloud infrastructure and technical helpdesks as core components of the new system.
The committee, however, said these gains must be consolidated by closing gaps in supply-chain computerisation, completing pending SMART-PDS modules, and continuing database purification to ensure that food subsidy benefits are redirected to genuine beneficiaries. The report also noted that the department has identified 29.1 million suspect beneficiaries through data analytics, including 22 million "silent" ration cards, more than 3.4 million deceased beneficiaries, around 3 million duplicate beneficiaries, 560,000 beneficiaries aged over 100 years, and over 210,000 single-member ration cards where the sole beneficiary is below 18 years of age. It recommended that field verification of these cases be completed in mission mode while ensuring that eligible beneficiaries are not wrongly excluded through robust grievance redressal mechanisms. Also Read | Govt appoints Anurag Jain as NITI Aayog CEO for two years Unified digital platform Among the panel's key recommendations is the creation of a unified national digital platform integrating procurement, allocation, warehousing, transportation, ration card management, biometric authentication, grievance redressal and payments to enable real-time monitoring and data-driven policymaking. It also said interoperability, cyber security, cloud infrastructure and technical support should be treated as non-negotiable pillars of SMART-PDS implementation.
The BriefWire