Hyderabad: Enforcement wing raids curb PDS stock diversion

Hyderabad: Setting up of an enforcement wing in civil supplies department last year to curb PDS irregularities has yielded good results. The enforcement teams conducted raids at 843 locations across the state over the past one year and have booked 71 criminal cases and 165 cases under 6A of Essential Commodities Act.

The teams could save nearly Rs 500 crore for the state exchequer by preventing diversion of PDS commodities and other irregularities. “We noticed that lack of strict vigilance and periodic inspections were the reasons for irregularities in public distribution system. To overcome this, we constituted a dedicated enforcement wing on February 1, 2017 consisting retired officials having a good track record from police, revenue, commercial tax and other departments. The 20-member enforcement wing is headed by an SP rank official. When the department incurred an expenditure of nearly Rs1.25 crore on constituting enforcement wing in a year, it could save up to Rs 500 cr by checking irregularities in PDS,” said C.V. Anand, the commissioner of civil supplies. 

“A two-month-exercise was done to recruit this team. Taking into consideration their track record, honesty, commitment, hard work, we appointed this team on contract basis,” Mr Anand  said.

Preventing illegal diversion of PDS rice, inspections on government private godowns, stage-1 and stage-2 vehicles,  variations in transactions before and after introduction of ePOS machines, performance of GPS, Supply Chain Management (SCM) are the responsibilities the enforcement team was entrusted with. 

From February 2016 to January 31, 2018 the enforcement teams have conducted 843 raids and special checks on mandal level godowns, FP shops, rice mills, organisations receiving sanna biyyam for mid-day meal programmes, hostels, welfare schools, LPG godowns, vehicles, trains transporting PDS rice to other states.

The teams seized 12,619 quintals of ration rice, 2,619 quintals of CMR paddy worth of Rs 3.60 cr. The checks also resulted in seizure of sugar, LPG cylinders, kerosene, worth Rs 3.90 lakh. The surprise checks and inspections also helped the department to detect the shortage and prevented the misappropriation of paddy, sanna biyyam and PDS rice to the extent of Rs 6.39 cr.

In Khamman, Nalgonda, Suryapet districts, four PD cases were booked on illegal traders by the respective district collectors following raids by teams. Illegal transportation of PDS rice has been stopped to a large extent, Mr Anand said.