IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Haryana government has decided to replace ration cards issued to the consumers with smart cards, said Financial Commissioner and Principal Secretary (Food and Supplies) Navraj Sandhu.

The work to prepare smart cards would commence from May 27 and 54 lakh families in Haryana will be covered under it, she said, adding Haryana would be the first state in the country to have this facility.

Chief Secretary of Andaman & Nicobar Islands Shri Shakti Sinha, Registrar General & Census Commissioner India, Dr. C. Chandramouli, Deputy Director General (NPR), Shri S.K.Chakarabarti, Director of Census Operations ,Shri V. Abraham, Chairman & Managing Director of ECIL, Shri Y.S.Mayya and a host of other dignitaries from the Central Government and UT Administration were present on the occasion.

The system will be put in place for 18-km Katra-Bhawan-Bharov stretch of route to cave shrine. The RFP has been invited from companies which have national presence for regulation of ponies, potters, delivery schedules, technical and commercial terms. The Municipal Committee Katra (MCK) has over 25,000 pony vendors who ferry roughly 35 lakh pilgrims, out of over one crore pilgrims visiting the cave shrine annually.

In order to gather biometric data, a photo session will be held across Dakshina Kannada district. The fingerprints and retina scan of every citizen over the age of five years will be taken for enrollment. The enrollment will be held in the presence of government officials appointed in this regard. One can enroll their data by submitting the slip that was given by enumerators during home visits and a letter issued by them to come for enrollment.

The state transport department is issuing the handheld RC or driving licence smartcard reader machines to all regional transport offices (RTOs) of the state.

The 16-kb microchip-embedded smartcards have been issued by the state government in place of driving licenses and vehicle registration booklets since 2009. But the roadblock in the implementation of the system was the lack of smartcard reader machines with the RTOs.

Corporation looks for a banking partner to initiate project

City residents will be able to access several services, including transport and parking facilities, with a smart card if a plan under the city Corporation’s Smart City projects becomes a reality. The ‘My Smart Tvm Card,’ an integrated, contactless payment card, is expected to be rolled out as part of the project.

With this smart card, residents will be able to pay for a host of services from e-autorickshaws to online payments of water bills and smart parking and payment for electronic vehicle charging stations. Other services proposed to be integrated into the system include payments related to the Corporation, Motor Vehicle Department or Police Department, tourism fee collection, and fee for e-governance services.

The technocrat-turned-politician, said at a public gathering at Bhinar village in Bhiwandi that while it was heartening that the state has made considerable progress in increasing its income in recent years, issues of unemployment, poverty and the homeless continue to plague the state 51 years after it came into being in 1960.

The CM had flown down to the Bhiwandi hamlet was in Bhiwandi to launch a novel initiative to issue smart cards to beneficiaries of the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Yojyna, a state-sponsored financial aid scheme for destitutes. The cards and the cash-vending machine will work on biometric technology, whereby the beneficiary can withdraw cash from the vending machine by putting a thumb impression registered on the card.

Since I wrote about green concerns of a smart city, many articles have appeared in the local papers as well as in the national dailies. The informed citizens are very much concerned what could be the shape of the smart city when the national mission on smart city is actually translated in to action and the dream of the PM becomes a reality. It is really a good sign. There are so many concerns to be taken care of, there are feelings that an actual smart city could be utopian in concept, not possible to be actually materialised in true sense. My daughter after reading my article “Green Concerns of smart Cities” (TSE, Nov 26, 2015)suggested that I should visit Lavasa, a city near Pune at a distance of 56 km. I had a chance to visit the city recently.

This way, unlicensed vendors can be detected and booked, claim authorities. “We used to come across several cases of duplication by vendors in the markets of this area, so the scheme has been introduced. The smart cards can be evaluated through computers for verification,” said a NDMC senior official.

"We will be able to use smart cards to ensure that unlicensed vendors can be found out easily and booked. We used to come across several cases of duplication by vendors, so the scheme has been introduced. The smart cards can be evaluated through computers and thus they can be verified," said a senior NDMC official.

Smart cards have become the latest buzzword to remedy India's public distribution system (PDS) — one of the largest food grain delivery networks in the world with more than 500,000 ‘ration' shops.

Electronic voting machines have streamlined Indian elections. Credit cards, which can be swiped for payment at any urban store, have transformed banking. Similarly, can the much talked about plastic smart cards reform the corrupt PDS? The PMO's Rangarajan panel has pinned all its hopes on it. But are they silver bullets?

RBI officials said that while they would have liked to have rolled the pilot out in all the northeastern states, under policy guidelines, 2 per cent of the payment is to be borne by the state government, and no government in the Northeast apart from Meghalaya has been willing to do so thus far.

One swipe of the smart card and hospital bills of up to Rs 30,000 can be paid under the Centrally sponsored Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). This potential of the smart card, unlocked for over twenty million beneficiaries of the scheme, is now set to empower beneficiaries of subsidised food grains in Orissa to buy wheat and rice. The idea is to have a single smart card serve multiple purposes.

The Orissa government has already got the approval of the Union labour ministry, which is the nodal ministry for RSBY, to use its smart card initially as an identification card under its public distribution system. It has also sought World Bank assistance to upgrade RSBY cards for supplying food grains under PDS. After the upgrade with new utilities embedded in the chip, the Orissa government would be the first in the country to have a smart ration card. Director General Labour Welfare Anil Sarup, who has been anchoring RSBY, says it is possible and sensible to have an RSBY smart card serve multiple purposes.

The committee, headed by C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, suggested that as an alternative to the existing PDS a switch over to the use of smart cards could be beneficial. This simply meant that the food subsidy could be directly transferred to the beneficiaries instead of the owners of the PDS stores.

Following the successful implementation of the e-governance initiative in Punjab's Transport Department, the Punjab Government has launched e-governance projects in all the 22 districts of Punjab.

"The project initiated first time in India by the transport department was fully successful and have already been effectively implemented in all the districts," said Punjab's Transport Minister, Ajit Singh Kohar.

“The ultimate linkage of Smart Cards with the Unique Identification Number ‘Aadhaar’ would ensure timely benefits to people”, he said adding it would streamline the services and improve governance.

A Haryana government official saidthat unique identification card (UIC) of the people in all age groups would also be prepared alongwith smart cards and the smart cards would eventually be linked with UIC.

Automated school roll-calls are the latest among applications to join the fast expanding club of smart-card and bio-metric chip use in India that is rapidly embracing most day-to-day activities including pay TV usage, vehicle tracking systems, highway toll payments, metro rail passes and even city bus passes.

It may be noted that those who were left out has to fill the KYR forms and should submit it at the enrolment camps with appropriate identity and residence proof. However biometric details will be collected from them only 90 days after submitting the form. For filling up the KYR form, any one of the following documents is sufficient: ration card, voter's ID, PAN card, passport or driving licence. "Numbers of these documents should be mentioned in the form and for registering it one should bring the original document to the camp," the official said.

Consumers may use this single card for payments in various parts and segments of the country which will include buses, suburban railways, toll, parking, smart city, and retail shops.

Chennaites could soon access Chennai Metro, suburban rail and metropolitan transport corporation buses using a single mobility card which was launched by Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) special officer I Jayakumar along with State Bank of India Chief General Manager R Radhakrishna on Friday.