The food control department in South Dinajpur has taken initiatives to intensify the process of linking people’s ration cards with the Aadhar card through a door-to-door campaign. The drive that started earlier this month will end on 15 September, officials said.

It may be noted here that the department in the district has received several complaints about problems people have been facing in the card linking process. “Staff from the food department are visiting houses to have people’s Aadhar cards linked with their ration cards. The department is doing this with a private company, which has been tasked to conduct such a linking process. They have already started work through the door-to-door visits and are solving problems at people’s doorsteps,” an official source said.

However, other sources said that although the work was started a month ago in the panchayat level through the Bangla Sahayata Kendras in South Dinajpur district, the department had failed to perform well due to some reasons.

According to sources at the district food control office, 75 per cent of the uploading work was completed, but only 45 per cent was verified by the central agency, while it has rejected the others for mismatch of information like spelling mistakes, date of birth etc.

“To solve this very problem, the state government has taken new initiatives through the door-to-door visit,” a source said. According to district administration sources, this work will continue in five phases. In the first phase, the staff members will visit beneficiaries and try to solve all document-related disputes there. For the next phase, camps will be held in the local area. So far, 80 per cent of the Aadhaar cards have been linked, sources said.

“On the other hand, as workers are facing various problems while going to houses, village or civic volunteers will escort the teams in the rural areas from this week,” a source said. According to the District Food Controller, Jayant Kumar Roy, 241 workers and staff members have been deployed for the work across the district.

“In the first phase, the work will be done at houses and later in camps. The work is presently going on in full swing and we hope to complete it before the stipulated time,” he said