The government has identified 262,000 of its employees in ongoing audits of the public distribution system (PDS) records. This move aims to investigate potential wrongful benefits related to subsidised foodgrains, according to a senior government official. The checks reflect a significant effort to ensure the integrity of the PDS and address any misuse of resources.
PFMS is a government platform used to track and manage payments and other financial transactions under various government schemes and programmes. The exercise is now set to widen, with the Union government seeking personnel data from the defence services and the home ministry. This could bring two of the country’s largest government workforces into the cross-check. Many states list government employment as grounds for excluding a household from the priority category under the National Food Security Act. In Bihar, one of the country’s largest and poorest states, households with a government employee are among those excluded from the PDS. PDS is the government’s main food distribution system, through which eligible households receive foodgrains at subsidised rates.
The state’s 2015 notification on this defines government service to include regular employment in the Centre and state governments, state-owned firms, local bodies and autonomous government institutions. It is enacted under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, which sets the broad entitlement and coverage framework, while states identify eligible households using their own exclusion/inclusion criteria.
“Most state governments disqualify central/state government employees as an exclusion criterion under the scheme, which makes this so puzzling,” the official cited above added on condition of anonymity. However, according to the official, “most government employees earn more than this threshold.
