Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government will soon conduct iris scanning of beneficiaries who are supplied ration under the Food Security Act (FSA).
Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Minister Ranendra Pratap Swain informed the Assembly on Wednesday.
According to Swain, it has been found that the fingerprints of some registered FSA beneficiaries could not be identified by biometric machines.
“Taking this into consideration, the state government will relax the mandatory thumb impression identification and conduct the iris scanning of these beneficiaries to match their biometric data,” the minister added.
The minister’s announcement came after the Congress chief whip, Tara Prasad Bahinipati, expressed concern over the plight of FSA beneficiaries.
“As most of the FSA beneficiaries are labourers, they do not have the impression on their fingers due to manual work round the clock. As a result, they are deprived of the rations as their fingerprints are not identified by the biometric machine. The state government has to take this matter seriously and come up with an alternative method of identification of these beneficiaries,” Bahinipati demanded.
