Chief Minister inaugurates Two-day Workshop held at Agartala A two-day "Regional Workshop on PDS Computerization and Reforms" was organised at Agartala during 17th -18th April, 2018 jointly by the Directorate of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Govt of Tripura and Department of Food & Public Distribution, Government of India.
The workshop was inaugurated by Shri Biplab Kumar Deb, Chief Minister of Tripura, in the presence of Shri Manoj Kanti Deb, Hon'ble Minister of Food, Sports & Youth Affairs, Shri Yatendra Kumar, Secretary, Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Government of Tripura and Shri Dinesh Kumar Gupta, Joint Secretary (BP&PD), GoI.
The Hon’ble Chief Minister, in his speech, stressed on the rapid adoption of technology and e-Governance to weed out corruption and leakage in the distribution of PDS commodities. He also inaugurated the distribution of food grains through the e-POS Application adopted from NIC-AP.
Shri Debasish Basu, Additional Secretary & Director, Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Govt. of Tripura, Shri C.K. Dhar, SIO, NIC, Tripura, Shri Guru Prasad, STD, NIC, AP, Shri Muthu Kumaran, STD, NIC, New Delhi, Smt. Annapurna Rao, TD, NIC, AP, and Shri Ravi Gupta, TD, NIC, New Delhi, Shri A.K.De, STD participated in the workshop. CPMU team from DoFPD imparted training to the participants, in addition to the key-note lectures by members from NIC HQs. & NIC-AP.
The targeted PDS Computerization project is being steered by the Ministry of CA, Food & PD, Govt. of India, under the 12th Five Year Plan, as a NeGP State MMP. It started during FY 2013-14 for an estimated expenditure of Rs. 884 Crores, with 90:10 sharing pattern between Centre and States for NE Region. The project is to be implemented in parts:
COMPONENT-I Laying IT based delivery foundation comprising of “Digitization of PDS Stakeholders data” (Data of Food officers, Food Depots, FPS, Millers, K. Oil Agencies, Transporters etc.), “Digitization of Ration Cards” (digitization of legacy ration cards), “State PDS Portal”, “Toll Free Call Centre”(No 1967) for consumer grievance Redressal and “Automation of PDS Supply Chain” (End-to-End Allocation & Supply Chain Management, starting from “Indent Generation for food grains to FCI”, “FCI Release Order”, “Transportation of Commodities from FCI-to-State Transit and State Transit-State Feeder Go-downs” and “Doorstep delivery up to FPS”). All the stated functionalities have been implemented on the adoption of NIC Central Application Software (CAS) for TPDS computerization. “Ration Card Management” and “Allocation & Supply Chain Management” progress is monitored from the National Dashboards.
COMPONENT -II IT based delivery to consumers FPS Automation, implemented on the adoption of NIC-AP AePDS Application. In Tripura, 7 FCI Depots and 123 State food Go-downs (located in 63 different locations) have been made online with suitable ICT installations, out of which 88 Go-downs are doing live transactions and 35 are working in deferred mode. Total of 9,25,249 Ration Cards in the state have been digitized (AAY: 1,09,230, PHH: 4,78,889, APL: 3,37,130). 97.72 % of NFSA RCs have been seeded with Aadhaar.
Aadhaar RD 2.0 compliant POS machine have been procured by the state government and installed in all 1,807 Fair Price Shops. Distribution of commodities through POS has been started on Trial basis from December 2017 and in real time mode from April, 2018. 111 FP Shops, located near International Border and beyond network coverage are being targeted with the adoption of offline POS-based software sourced from NIC-AP.
Tripura has completed the technical requirements for the fulfilment of the “Computerization of TPDS” project and is geared to implement the IMPDS project of the Government of India, during FY 2018-21.
Representatives from the Food Departments of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland participated in the workshop and made field trips to FCI & State Food Go-downs, and Fair Price Shops.