[Ponmayilal]

I am still not sure whether a ration card is an absolutely essential document.

My father was a resident in Bangalore since 1969. He was staying in a lodge till he got married in 1972 and set up the family in Rajajinagar. At that time he says he had no problem whatsoever in getting a ration card. The office people were very courteous then and after due verification of his rented address, he got it may be in a month. Since then it was being renewed continuously with one address change which was made by the office staff themselves when they came for house to house verification.

But all these are bygone good old days. The last renewal was done in Oct 2001 with the photograph of the head of the family and names of other family members. It was an APL card.

The card expired on 31 Dec 2006 and there was no official renewal mela since then. The card also became useless since it was said Income-Tax assessees are not eligible for the rations. Since then none of the residents in our locality - as far as I know - have any ration card.

Recently of course, having bungled and after having issued innumerable bogus ration cards, the department suddenly woke up and put all the residents to a lot of inconvenience by asking everyone to march to the LPG Agency and furnish their current APL/BPL cards and in their absence furnish a copy of the Gas Customer Card issued by the Agency alongwith the Electricity RR Number.

My father luckily had preserved the Gas card issued by the agency in 1991 and submitted the same along with the RR number..

Today the dept has announced that the status of the APL/BPL Ration Card and the LPG connection can now be verified in their website Govt. of KARNATAKA. Food and Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs

We checked and our gas connection has passed the litmus test and what a relief.

[sriturl]

Originally Posted by black12rr

Passport costs ,legally -1000 rs ,Ration card -illegally -2000 Rs . Wa wa !

Ration card legally costs less than a couple of hundreds, and yes, zero bribe. I have seen that happening a few colleagues of mine.
All you need to do is get the a certificate of your name being deleted from your previous ration card from your parents card. Typically it may be in a different town(anywhere in india)
take that certificate. If it is not in English/Kannada, have a translation done into english, and take it to an office in Chamarajpet, and fill up a form with an address proof and this certificate.
My friends got the ration card after being verified in less than 2 weeks !

Its a fairly simple process, and we donot make an attempt to know it, and instead pay middlemen a huge amount of money.

[Ponmayilal]

Originally Posted by Ponmayilal

I am still not sure whether a ration card is an absolutely essential document......

Food and Civil Supplies minister seems to have answered this query already.

"Several people have come to Bangalore for work. Not all of them have ration cards. Further, though a few VIPs have cards, they hardly use it. But a ration card is necessary to obtain a passport or visa. For those who do not use the cards, we plan to give them a different coloured one to be used only as identity proof. But everybody should have one ration card and one LPG connection as per the law,” Shobha explained.

Source: Every citizen should have a ration card, News - City - Bangalore Mirror,Bangalore Mirror

Sooner or later, she now wants everyone to queue up for arming themselves with a ration card.

Now going back, as I said earlier, many did have ration cards which expired in Dec 2006. The department made no attempts to renew the cards as it was doing before and allowed these to lapse since they were not eligible to draw any rationed/subsidised food articles.

Now suddenly the minister has realised that "everybody should have one ration card and one LPG connection as per the law"

I still do not know which law states that.

Now why can't the department officials visit each and every household get all the documents required and renew the ration cards in a phased and systematic manner?

[Ponmayilal]

Originally Posted by kd7202

Just wait for some time.

Nandan Nilekani is going to solve all these problems with the UID project.

Cheers

KD

Here is news about UID and news about Bangalore.

"The city police on Wednesday arrested five persons for issuing unique identification (UID) bearing fake Aadhaar logos and numbers.
Ironically, the arrests were made on the day the state government issued an order directing all its departments to insist on Aadhaar numbers under the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) as identity and address proof from citizens availing utility services."

Read on: there are already fake UID numbers floating about in Bangalore « UID Card | UID Number | AadhaaR Number | AadhaaR Card | Aadhaarcard.info

The government's intentions are good but when it comes to implementation we are in dumps!

Meri Bangalore Mahan!

[alpha1]

^ Well its expected (and lots more too - but why should I divulge )

UID is not something great.
Its just a centralization of various databases (like PAN, passport, ration, DL etc).
What makes the public think that THIS database cannot be created for fake entities, and purposes.

Or that certain percentage of UIDs shall be reserved and unlocked only upon giving a commission to tout outside the UID office?

Its another scam made by the govt machinery to keep the idiotic public happy.
And give then a false assurance that things are improving.
Keep in mind - the govt intentions can NEVER be good.
Someone who is at power will never have will to take efforts to empower the public.
No one is like Maximus (from the movie Gladiator - who "intended to sweep Rome with his loyal army, remove the Ceasar, restore the power to Senate, and leave Rome with his victorious men")

If govt really wants - it can easily improve the condition of current "ID" based instruments like Passport, Driving license, Ration card, Voter ID, LPG connection etc
Centralizing everything is not going to solve the problems, but introduce a new one.

(and we can already see the Babus beeming)

[sj_koova]

Can any of you tell me Whitefield falls under which Civil supplies office in Bangalore. I know there are five different offices in Bangalore. Not sure which one I should go to.

My ration card and LPG are suspended. Need to renew ration card urgenly.

I had obtained it from Chamrajpet office 8 years back through proper process. I changed my adress few years later, but did not transfer the ration card.

[m8002?]

Originally Posted by sj_koova

My ration card and LPG are suspended. Need to renew ration card urgenly.

If you have the EB bill in your name, just upload a scanned copy of that in the website. You LPG connection should get validated and approved in 3-4 days.

You can take up the ration card activity after this.

[SilentEngine]

My LPG connection status is fine according to the website.
However just came to know from website that LPG connection of my parents in Mangalore is suspended because of not submitting documents. I remember my parents submitting their documents.

So now my parents have to redo the process because of inefficiencies of the government.

[Deep Blue]

Originally Posted by kd7202

Just wait for some time.

Nandan Nilekani is going to solve all these problems with the UID project.

Cheers

KD

Don't know why, I somehow get a feeling he is only creating another headache for the honest taxpayer.

Originally Posted by SilentEngine

My LPG connection status is fine according to the website.
However just came to know from website that LPG connection of my parents in Mangalore is suspended because of not submitting documents. I remember my parents submitting their documents.

So now my parents have to redo the process because of inefficiencies of the government.

Ask them to upload the documents online, they will atleast get an acknowledgement slip and number. I too am going through the same hassle again.

[nimbleguru]

My parents called me up yesterday and asked me to check my status online and lo and behold ! it's suspended

I had to wait in the queue for more than 2 hours at my agency and submit the documents - all for nothing.

As you guys suggested I'm going to try (repeat TRY) uploading the documents.
(pretty sure uploading the docs in govt website will be a breeze - pun heavily intended)

One question :
We live in a rented house, hence the address in the EB and ration-card would (obviously) differ. Will this be a problem ?

[addyhemmige]

Originally Posted by nimbleguru

One question :
We live in a rented house, hence the address in the EB and ration-card would (obviously) differ. Will this be a problem ?

It should not be a problem. At least in my case it was not a problem. The address on my ration card was the old address and I had not got it changed to the new one. I submitted the same ration card and the electricity bill of the new house.

My status shows that my connection is continued

[SilentEngine]

It turned out that whoever uploaded the information first time (must be someone from LPG distributor who had collected the documents), missed the first character R in LPG consumer number, so the connection against actual consumer number was suspended.

I have again uploaded the documents. Hoping that this will solve the problem.

[Ponmayilal]

Originally Posted by SilentEngine

It turned out that whoever uploaded the information first time (must be someone from LPG distributor who had collected the documents), missed the first character R in LPG consumer number, so the connection against actual consumer number was suspended.....

What is this first character R in LPG consumer No.? How can omitting this letter suspend another consumer's LPG connection?

Do you mean to say there can be two consumers with say R 21667 and plain 21667 without any alphaphet ahead?

I ask this because our consumer no. is only a 6 digit number without any alphabet ahead and any agency can have 999999 consumers at the maximum. There should be no need for the agency to prefix an alphaphet or have this dual numbering.

Second, I do not think that the documents submitted by the consumers were uploaded by the agency. These were simply handed over to the department and the department had admitted that some bundles collected by them simply went missing!!!

[SilentEngine]

Originally Posted by Ponmayilal

What is this first character R in LPG consumer No.? How can omitting this letter suspend another consumer's LPG connection?

No i meant our consumer number which is R XXXXX is suspended. Not another consumer.

Do you mean to say there can be two consumers with say R 21667 and plain 21667 without any alphaphet ahead?

I ask this because our consumer no. is only a 6 digit number without any alphabet ahead and any agency can have 999999 consumers at the maximum. There should be no need for the agency to prefix an alphaphet or have this dual numbering.

I think numbering system of consumer numbers is dependent on the oil company. We have a connection from Indane (IOC). The number has R preceding the other 5 digits. This is what is in the booklet that we have since last 16 years. But for all practical purposes like booking a refill etc, the 5 digits were sufficient.
I don't think there will be two consumers with same numbers. It may just be a system used by IOC.
May be anyone else using Indane here can confirm.

Second, I do not think that the documents submitted by the consumers were uploaded by the agency. These were simply handed over to the department and the department had admitted that some bundles collected by them simply went missing!!!

Probably you are right. Agencies were just asked to collect the documents.

What has happened is that whoever entered the number in these system, ignored the first character.
If i check the status of LPG connection R XXXXX, it says connection suspended because of not submitting documents.
But if i check the status of the ration card number, it shows status as 'ration card continued', and also shows the correct RR number of electricity meter. It also shows the LPG consumer number as XXXXX and says it is an invalid number.
So basically they are doing a match against some database which has data collected from 3 different places. Ration card number from food & civil supplies dept., RR number from electricity board and consumer number from Oil companies.

[addyhemmige]

Originally Posted by SilentEngine

I don't think there will be two consumers with same numbers. It may just be a system used by IOC.
May be anyone else using Indane here can confirm.

I am an Indane customer and I don't have any prefixed alphabet in my consumer number. It is just the regular 5 digit number.

Did you try entering your Consumer number without the prefixed alphabet?