what is the amount of money wasted on this futile exercise
In Jan 2011, Karnataka food and civil supplies department ostensibly started an exercise to weed out illegal ration cards issued by its long corrupt official machinery. Over decades they were advising and issuing illegal cards for gratification. They postfacto without legal authority or sanction extended the exercise to cover illegal LPG connections.
The ration cards which were perfectly legal for decades and for which the recipients in the past decade or so were not recieving any sops were declared illegal. We the holders are still around and the only use we had for the ration card was for identification purposes. That is still valid information as far as the government is concerned.
An exercise that should have been taken up only by the LPG companies in view of their privatization and consequent private contract between them and their LPG consumer. If there was a violation of contract or fraud they and only they could terminate it.The department also illegally and unauthorizedly linked the electrical etc consumer numbers as a means of identifying the illegal connections when they were originally gotten without this. There was never a bar for more than one connection at one address or in one name or in one RR(electrical connection) number whether it was commercial or residential. Furthermore the department transferred the onus of providing the information to the consumers who had to stand for hours in front of their supply agency. The data was irresponsibly uploaded with innumerable errors. Again the onus of correcting it was coerced on to the consumers. The department servers were totally unable to handle the load. Based on totally incorrect information at first lakhs of consumers were declared illegal. When this was pointed out to the authorities-see attached complaint- they gradually withdrew from the exercise. Finally the chief minister even called it off. But despite being reminded that the LPG companies were liable for deficiency and denial of service they continue the threat. While every legal consumer is for weeding out illegal connections, we do not wish to be arm twisted with illegal authority.
The last straw is the crores of exchequer money , countless man hours wasted and the totally avoidable inconvenience and torture to legal consumers in this exercise which finally might have produced may be less than 5 percent of the 45 lakhs legal connections. Where and who got these crores is the question. I would like RTI incognito to obtain this information from karnataka food and civil supplies department. ahara.kar.nic.in/
Drft. RTI Appln:
To,
The Commissioner,
Food,Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs Dept,
Govt. of Karnataka, Cunningham Road,
Bangalore 560001
Sir,
Sub: Application under Sn.6 of RTI Act
Under Section 6 of the RTI Act 2005 Iam filing this application. Kindly provide me the following information;
Your Dept. during January 2011, undertook an exercise to weed out illegal LPG connections by asking the consumers to provide various information like, LPG connection number,RR number, residential address, etc. The public were harassed much while doing this exercise and after sometime the list of reported illegal connections were also notified, inconveniencing genuine consumers. After all this exercise, your action for weeding out the illegal connections has been withdrawn by an order of the Chief Minister. In this background I request you provide the following;
1. Whether the work of making data entries for the data furnished by the consumers during this exercise has been contracted out to Private Agencies; if so to which Agency the work has been awarded?
2.Whether any tenders were called for the work or simply an Agency has been picked and awarded the work.
3.What is the expenditure incurred so far on the work?
4. Pl furnish a copy of the work order indicating the terms & conditions of the contract.
An IPO for Rs.10/- towards the fees as is required under the rules is also enclosed.
Yoursfaithfully
Uncle,
Seems like the reply recieved from this office is false. What should be the next step, for this false information ?
Anand
Hi Anand, Can we have any valid proof to say that the reply given is false ? No…. When we are not satisfied with the reply by the PIO, we may appeal to Appellate authority. But here in this case, the Appellate authority also gives the same reply.
We have filed this RTI Application.Speed Post Consignment Number:
EW922413961IN
We will inform you as soon as we get a reply.
We have received reply for this RTI Application. The reply is posted here.
Very interesting obfuscating lie. The government admitted there were innumerable errors in uploading the data. there was enormous backlog. overloaded servers frequently crashing. none of the physical verification has been completed due to lack of manpower in the department. the serious shortage in the existing manpower and inability to handle normal work of issuing new ration cards is evident from experience. new ration cards have been pending for years, bogus cards have not been suspended again due to shortage of staff. yet they want the public to believe that this department had the capacity to pull off this huge exercise of 75 lakhs cards in 8 months. all the while crores worth of ration food grains were sold in black to private parties. people judge for yourself.
Wait list for new ration cards is more than an year. Illegal bogus ration cards, blackmarketing of ration grains, corruption, in the grains has not been controlled in 3 decades. The department has not had any computer trained staff strength, certainly not enough as I said to handle data from 75 lakh connections collected in a matter of 3 months to decide legal or illegal connections. They still donot have enough man power to verify the proven illegal connections. and how can any one believe that they have not used any external contract in this massive wasted exercise?
I have always had my reservations about the ability of RTI to extract truth from manipulating crooked officials and politicians. This exercise simply proves my point.