| Low-income families get APL cards, left in lurch by CA&PD Deptt | |    |  ARUN JASROTIA
EarlyT imes Report
UDHAMPUR, June 4: Hundreds of ration card holders and their families, who fall in the low income group, have been registered as Above Poverty Line (APL) in village Chappar of Latti area in district Udhampur.
Several ration card holders in the area are irked over the government’s irrational bracketing of the people with low incomes into APL and not into Below Poverty Line (BPL).
The aggrieved people said that they are poor masses working as labourers but CA&PD Department has put them in the APL category and now it has no time to listen to their woes.
“CA&PD department when started the online procedure to link Aadhar Card with Ration cards many errors had occurred during the entire exercise as several deserving families were left out from the BPL category,” said the villagers.
“Linking the Aadhaar card with ration cards did more harm than any good. It has worked erroneously as many BPL card holders got automatically converted to the APL category, due to some technical error during the process of linking thereby leaving the poor masses on the verge of starvation,” they added.
Jagdish Raj, a resident of the village, said that due to the follies of the department the deserving families are not getting the benefits they are entitled for, adding that that during the ongoing lockdown we were unable to procure cheaper ration or could avail free quota from the Public Distribution Stores.
“If we had BPL ration cards then we would have get free ration as per the government announcements. Though we didn’t perish due to COVID-19 but its hundred percent sure that we will die due to starvation as most of the families have no money to purchase ration from open market,” he said.
He said that they raised this issue in front of Tehsil Supply Officer, Sarpanch and Panchs but our voice remained unheard at every forum.
When contacted, Arif Lone, Assistant Director CA&PD Department Udhampur, said that we have received many complaints regarding discrepancies in BPL ration cards and we have identified more than 1100 families from various villages so far.
The Ration cards got converted into APL due to an error in the portal error. We will fix it soon and those who deserve the BPL ration should be given the same by June 15,” said the Assistant Director CA&PD Department Udhampur.
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