Madikeri: Deputy Commissioner Richard Vincent D’Souza on Thursday directed officials to organise special Aadhaar card enrolment camps for ration card holders who do not have unique indentity number.

Presiding over a meeting of revenue department officers here, he said the camps can be organised in all three taluks in the district—Madikeri, Virajpet and Somwarpet—to address the grievances of those whose Aadhaar card numbers are not seeded with cards, as it has been made compulsory to avail the benefit.

Taking into cognisance other issues related to ration cards, the DC said there are complaints about below poverty line (BPL) cards issued to ineligible persons and also in some cases, the BPL families have been given Above Party Line (APL) cards. The work on weeding out fake beneficiaries should also be taken up, he suggested.

D’Souza said awareness programmes on newly introduced coupons for availing kerosene under public distribution system (PDS) should be taken up. In the case of queries, if any, arrangements should be made to respond to people at tahsildar offices and Nadakacheris at hobli level, he added.

Additional Deputy Commissioner M Satish Kumar directed the food and civil supplies department not to stop distribution of ration to card holders, even if they do not have Aadhaar numbers.

Deputy director of food and civil supplies department Chandrakanth Nayak said there are 92,624 card holders in the district, including BPL and Anthyodaya card holders. Among them, 89,759 cards are seeded with Aadhaar numbers, while in the case of 2,855 card holders, the work on seeding Aadhaar numbers is still remaining. A total of 6,302 cards have been suspended for not furnishing Aadhaar card numbers, he added.

In the current year, 696 cards have been converted to APL cards from a total of 1,015 BPL cards, while in the previous year 3,072 cards were converted to APL ones, he added.

Assistant commissioner Dr Nanjunde Gowda set a time table for the deputy director of food and civil supplies department to receive the grievances of people, especially related to ration cards, on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Somwarpet, Virajpet and Madikeri respectively at tahsidars’ office.

D’Souza directed the taluk panchayat executive officers to provide a list of siteless people in every gram panchayat in the district.

Earlier, the meeting also discussed about failure to maintain land handed over to panchayats. There were discussions about distributing land for developing sites, disposal of solid waste and also for burial grounds.

Executive officer of Virajpet taluk panchayat Fednekar said 1,449 siteless families have been identified in 38 gram panchayats in the taluk.

Following a direction from the Deputy Commissioner to take measures on constructing shelters at Gonikoppa bus stand as passengers at time are forced to wait under sun and rain, the TP executive officer promised to direct respective panchayat development officer (PDO) to take action in this regard.

Joint director of agriculture department Ramappa, deputy director of department of veterinary sciences and animal husbandry Dr Nagaraju, tahsildars Mahadeva Swamy and Shivappa, DCF Edakundalu, executive officers Chandrashekar and Jeevan, CMC commissioner B B Pushpavathi and assistant executive engineer K M Ravikumar attended the meeting.