Five Enforcement teams to check irregularities

The Civil Supplies Department has formed enforcement wing with five teams to check irregularities, including diversion of subsidised commodities to the black market.

Giving the appointment letters to the officials posted in the enforcement wing, Commissioner of Civil Supplies C.V. Anand stated that the wing was created following the decision taken at the board meeting held in November last. Each team of the enforcement wing would consist of four retired officials drawn from police, commercial taxes, revenue departments and Food Corporation of India, since there was shortage of manpower within the department.

The enforcement wing was established to improve the prestige of the Civil Supplies Department in the eyes of people. The main activities of the Civil Supplies Corporation were procurement of paddy under Minimum Support Price operations, milling of paddy under custom milling of rice, procurement of superfine variety rice from millers for supply to government hostels and schools under mid-day-meal scheme and rice for public distribution system, he said.

Shortage of staff

Although the annual turnover of the Corporation was about ₹10,000 crore, shortage of staff had been a major hindrance in its efficient functioning. The enforcement wing would book cases under the Essential Commodities Act on diversion of PDS commodities.

In spite of measures being taken to control diversion of commodities, such irregularities were still taking place, though there was some improvement during the last two months.

Officials for the enforcement teams were taken on contract basis for a period of one year. Each team would be headed by a retired Superintendent of Police with one retired Tahsildar, one retired DCTO/ACTO and one Inspector/Sub-Inspector. The team were also being provided with a hired vehicle each and the teams would be supervised by retired SP K. Sampath Kumar, who also heads the team in the headquarters covering Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy, Medchal and Vikarabad districts.

The expenditure on the enforcement wing would be met from the administrative charges being allowed as per the CMR costing sheet of the Centre.

CS department to monitor e-PDS kerosene supply across state

A new software will be developed to plug leakages in the supply of kerosene being provided to the poor through fair price shops in the State. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been instructed to develop the software by the Telangana state civil supplies department.

The announcement was made by civil supplies commissioner CV Anand on Wednesday after speaking to representatives of the oil companies and wholesale kerosene dealers as well.

Anand pointed out that there was no proper coordination among oil company authorities and wholesale dealers which were causing delays in lifting and supply of kerosene. The commissioner stressed the need for measures to sort out delays in supply to Fair Price (FP) shop dealers.

To curtail diversion of kerosene and to sort out the problems in the existing system, the commissioner has instructed the NIC authorities to develop the software under which the entire allocation to wholesale dealers and fair price shop dealers till the shop level to be done through online only.

At present, the allocation, lifting and distribution of rice, sugar and other commodities except kerosene is exclusively being done online in the ePDS application. All the concerned officers should bring kerosene into the ambit of the ePDS application as well, Anand said. This is to ensure that kerosene is supplied to all card holders from the start of the month to 15 of the same month.

He asked the representatives of dealers not to commit irregularities in the process of supply otherwise stringent action would be taken against violators. He informed that there were several complaints on diversion of kerosene and that GPS devices are being installed to kerosene tankers. The commissioner also assured the dealers that their grievances will be addressed but subject to the condition that they do not indulge in irregularities.

Civil supplies department to extend use of EPOS units across Telangana

Following the directives of the central and state governments, the Civil Supplies department initiated reforms with the implementation of Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) Unit system throughout the state.

The EPOS machines are provided with advanced features and at a low price too.

In the process of finalising the tenders for EPOS machines, the civil supplies have also saved Rs 3 crores, the department claimed.

A committee with senior government officials was formed to finalise the tenders. “The process of tendering was completed in a transparent manner and we gave the tender to the company that offered the lowest rental per month per unit,” civil supplies commissioner CV Anand said adding that this saved Rs 3 crores for the state exchequer.

On the additional features incorporated in the machines, Anand said the EPOS units are already in vogue in the fair price shops of Greater Hyderabad for the implementation of Public Distribution System. These machines recognise the fingerprints of beneficiaries.

“Iris scanner, electronic weighing machine, swiping Aadhar Enabled System (AEPAS), audio/voice features are the added facilities,” explained Anand.

Civil Supplies Department included in EODB ranking plan

Telangana State government has started making efforts to retain its top ranking in Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) next year too.Civil Supplies Commissioner C.V.Anand attended the meeting held by Chief secretary on the preparedness of EoDB of various departments at Secretariat here on Tuesday.Civil Supplies department have been newly included in EoDB ranking plan.

There are a set of 294 questions in the ‘New Business Reform Action Plan’ covering 13 secretariat departments and 27 HoDs.The new action plan for EoDB was formulated and each department has appointed a nodal officer for implementing reforms.

The chief secretary has requested all principal secretaries/secretaries/HoDs to ensure that all reforms are put to use by March 2017.

Civil Supplies Corporation in for major revamp

A major revamp of Telangana State Civil Supplies Corporation is on the cards, for improving its functional efficiency, with addition of five wings — information technology, enforcement, finance, technical and engineering.
Initiatives by IT wing will include enabling of Aadhaar-linked payments and e-POS terminals doubling up as micro ATMs in all the 17,500 fair price shops in the state, Commissioner Civil Supplies C.V.Anand said at a press briefing here on Tuesday.
The measures have been tried in 620 FP shops in Siddipet on an experimental basis, and will be implemented all over the State by January 26. Iris scanning too will be introduced in the shops in addition to biometrics. Weighing scales and voice-over facilities will be provided towards improving transparency in operations.
IT initiatives
Tablet phones are being given to the IKP volunteers and marketing staff at paddy purchase centres under Online Payment Management Systems (OPMS) to enable online payments to farmers.
The entire fleet of 1150 trucks used for transport of essential commodities will be equipped with GPS devices, and their movements will be tracked from the soon to be launched central command centre.
Use of Geofencing technology will ensure that alerts are sent to authorities concerned if the vehicles go off the boundaries.
CCTV cameras installed at the warehouses will be linked to the joint collectors’ offices of the respective districts.
A Social media centre would be set up to get alerts from public on activities of the department employees in the field.
Office revamp
For proper enforcement, the State office will be divided into five wings, and a team of retired police and commercial taxes officers will be pressed into service for each division. Retired employees will be employed for finance wing too, apart from hiring the services of chartered accountants while the technical wing will have outsourced candidates hired from Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University.
“With a mere 8 crore expenditure for all these measures, hundreds of crores of savings can be ensured. The Board has already given its approval. State government will not have to bear the burden, as we are going to utilise central funding,” he said. 
Tough action will be taken against millers who are defaulting on delivery of custom milled rice (CMR). The default in exchange of gunny bags for many years has resulted in loss of 5 crore, which is being recovered from the millers. The Corporation would be saving 14 crore by shifting to road transport from rail.
Tremendous Change in 5 Months
Mr.Anand took charge of civil supplies last year on August 20.He brought change in the attitude of millers through continuous deliberations with them.All the stake holders were instructed to come up with out of the box solutions to enhance the functioning of the organisation.
-> Irregularities in purchase of gunny bags has been controlled effectively. -> New transport policy  -> All time record in Collection of current CMR.Never before in the history of civil supplies corporation. -> Special drives to recover 5 cr gunny bags worth Rs 200 cr -> Double pronged strategy while dealing with millers to collect CMR arrears.  -> Modified control order 17(introduced in 2008) by adding clauses D,E which allows to register criminal cases on ration card holders who tend to sell PDS products in open market -> Change in rice millers attitude. -> Instant cash transfers to farmers. Cash credited in two days. -> Legal Metrology department to adopt latest technology. -> E-Pass implementation. -> Corrupted officials removed from their jobs and others were counselled. -> Cancelled deputations, transfers done more transparently. -> Fixing of  GPS equipment to 1,150  vehicles  yielded good results.
 All in All, reforms paid handsome dividends and civil supplies department has saved Rs 700 crore of Government funds.

C.V. Anand all for curbing poll expenses

Civil Supplies Commissioner C.V. Anand addressed nodal election officers of five states which are going to polls on poll expenditure. He spoke on ‘Expenditure Control, Collection of Intelligence and Coordination of various Agencies’ at a programme organised by the Election Commission in Delhi where election officers from Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur were present. The programme was also attended by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi and two Election Commissioners Achala Kumar Joti and Om Prakash Rawat.

Mr. Anand gave recent examples and case studies and issues from the Tamil Nadu elections where he was special observer and also from Cyberabad in the 2014 general elections. He spoke on the several systems he had introduced like fitting GPS on all election related vehicles of the surveillance teams and flying squads, starting of joint control rooms to monitor them; tracking of bank accounts and suspicious bank and ATM transfer and transactions; transport of cash and goods by air, trains and vehicles.

 He also shared his experience tracking the production of liquor breweries and wine shops. He told the Election Officers on the need to use the social media, especially WhatsApp, gainfully for conduct of elections and get valuable feedback from public.

Millers warned of action

Commissioner of Civil Supplies, C V Anand today warned that cases will be filed under the stringent Preventive Detention (PD) Act against the rice millers who failed to deliver arrears of CMR. Anand, who convened a meeting today with the Managers of Civil Supplies Corporation and defaulters of custom milled rice (CMR), informed that 21 rice millers of Warangal, Medak, Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar and Adilabad districts are yet to deliver 6000 MTs of CMR worth of Rs 17 crores against 2015-16.

According to an official release, the Commissioner of Civil Supplies directed the millers to deliver arrears of CMR against the crop year 2015-16 immediately failing which cases under Preventive Detention Act will be filed. 

He has also stated that out of CMR dues of Rs 482 crores, already amount of Rs 465 crores (99 per cent) was realised and instructions were issued to the officials to realise the balance amount of Rs 17 crores. He also cautioned that each and every paisa due from the millers to Government will be recovered without sparing anybody and if any miller failed to co-operate with the Government, stringent action will be initiated for recovery under Revenue Recovery Act (RR Act) and filing PD Cases as per law. 

He informed that 100 per cent of CMR will be collected from this year onwards without any arrears.

"The reason for getting back CMR on time is very important. The state government and Civil Supplies Department pays farmers upfront in the form of Rs 1510 per quintal on MSP. This paddy is handed over to the millers to be converted into rice for use in the PDS programme. The expenditure in thousands of crores towards payment to farmers is met from the cash credit of SBI/other Banks and is reimbursed quarterly by the Government of India," he said. 

There is a monthly interest of 11 per cent to be paid by the Civil Supplies Corporation. Therefore the delay in giving CMR to the department increases the interest burden manifold, Anand pointed out adding meanwhile, the millers mill the paddy and use the rice for other purposes - some export it and some redivert it for PDS purposes etc. A break has been put on this trend of the past decade. 

Anand expressed satisfaction over delivery of CMR to the extent of 60 per cent in the present Kharif season, the release added.