Hyderabad: BPL families in the state will have to purchase all essential commodities in the open market from June, except for rice. The TS government has been gradually excluding items from the list of essential commodities sold in ration shops at subsidised rates for below poverty line families. From supplying nine types of essential commodities when it took over in June 2014, the government has whittled down the list to just three —rice, sugar and kerosene.
Since the Centre has done away with the subsidy on sugar in the Union Budget in February, the TS government is planning to stop supply of sugar to ration shops from June. Kerosene has no takers after the Deepam LPG connections for the poor came into effect, so rice is the only commodity that ration shops will be selling. The government has been secretive about its plan to scrap sugar. It gave oral instructions to ration dealers not to pay DDs for lifting sugar stocks in May for the month of June, indicating that there would be no supply of sugar from June.
The Congress government headed by N Kiran Kumar Reddy introduced the Amma Hastham scheme under which nine essential commodities — wheat flour, salt, chilli powder, turmeric, tamarind, sugar, pulses and oil — were supplied in a packet for just Rs 180. But after the TRS government took over, it scrapped the Amma Hastham scheme and restricted ration shops to supplying just rice, sugar and kerosene. Ration dealers are seeking cancellation of their dealerships as they are not earning enough with the commission being only on the sale of rice.
There are nearly 17,000 ration dealers in the state. They were able to survive on the commission of the original nine commodities. They used to get 22 paise commission per kilo on sugar, 18 paise on wheat, 20 paise on rice, 50 paise on edible oil, 25 paise on a litre of kerosene, 55 paise on a kilo of red gram, one rupee on a kilo of wheat flour and one rupee on a kilo of salt. The dealer used to earn Rs 20 per ration card per month. Now, dealers say, they hardly earn Rs 5 per card.
