New Delhi, Oct 30: Minister for Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, Qamar Ali Akhoon Tuesday strongly pleaded with the government of India for providing ration quota to Jammu and Kashmir as per 2011 census.
Addressing the Food Ministers Conference here, Akhoon said being the border state, the ration provided to J&K on the basis of 2001 census was not fulfilling the state’s requirement as population of the state has increased manifold since 2001. He also pleaded to release the funds for digitization of records of CA&PD for which state government has already formulated computerization project.
A CAPD official said JK receives a monthly quota of 63067 metric tones (MTs) of ration from the Centre at the scale of 35 kilograms per family per month for 18.02 lakh Ration Ticket (RT) holders. He said this was not sufficient to meet the requirement of 19.60 lakh RT holders currently registered with the CAPD.
“The state was facing a deficit of about 55.30 MTs of food grains per month at the existing scale,” the official said. Regarding Kerosene Oil supply the official said they are faced with deficiency of the fuel as state was not getting supply as per its requirement.
“For a total of about 10 lakh ration tickets, we need at least 70 lakh litres of K oil supply per month from the central government. However, we are only getting 48 lakh litres on the basis of 1991 census,” the official said.
Besides, three lakh families in Jammu and Kashmir are without ration cards.
“There are approximately 3.02 lakh families without ration cards in the state. At present the state government is providing ration to 19.71 lakh families as per as 2001 census. However, as per census 2011, the total population of the state is 125.48 lakh souls which works out 22.73 lakh families at an average size of 5.52 persons per family. There is shortage of ration for 3.02 lakh families,” the Minister told recently concluded session of the Legislative Assembly here.
Meanwhile, regarding supply of ration for centrally sponsored welfare schemes, the Minister has demanded continuation of last year’s quota for this year too.
He also said that in J&K there was a dire need to enhance the capacity of ration godowns for which proposal was sent to Central Government for funding.

Lastupdate on : Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Tue, 30 Oct 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Wed, 31 Oct 2012 00:00:00 IST