Hyderabad: Civil Supplies Corporation (CSC) has reduced its debt burden by Rs 4,293.42 crore to turnaround itself financially. With this, it has a debt of Rs 54,329.67 crore as on March 11, 2024 compared to Rs 58,623.08 crore at the beginning of the year.
The corporation recovered 8.81 lakh metric tonnes of rice from the millers and gave them to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to get money, which was used to repay the debt. According to official sources, the corporation expects Rs 2,000 crore shortly which will further help reduce its debt.
CSC’s efforts to reduce debt received appreciation during a meeting of the state food secretaries and officials of Food Corporation of India, where the principal secretary of the civil supplies D.S.. Chouhan gave a presentation.
According to the officials, efforts are underway to avoid crop overlap and extensions are not being given to the rice millers for the delivery of rice. The department has further initiated inspections on benami dealers who were running the PDS shops. From initial pleas to include family members to authenticate rice delivery officials, even outsiders entered the system, though the license is in the name of one person. This, they say, is being weeded out by restricting it to immediate family members like son, wife, husband, unmarried daughter, etc.
The scrutiny was done under the instruction issued by the chief rationing officer, Hyderabad, to additional collectors, district civil supply officers to identify and eliminate the benami dealers by conducting inspections.
So far, of the 13,914 PDS shops surveyed, cases have been booked against 29 dealers. The cases booked are as under Jagityal (4), K.Asifabad (7), Mahabubnagar (1), Mancherial (5), Medak (2), Medchal (1), Nalgonda (7), Sangareddy (1), Warangal (2) districts. Criminal cases have also been booked against eight of them in Narayanpet (2), Ranga Reddy (1) and Suryapet (5) districts. Nearly 76 dealers had gone on leave prior to the holding of inspection and four of them tendered their resignation in Kamareddy (2) and Nagarkurnool.
