Livemint, July 23, 2026
A parliamentary standing committee on consumer affairs, food and public distribution has asked the Centre to accelerate the rollout of the ₹349.9-crore Scheme for Modernization and Reforms through Technology in Public Distribution System (SMART-PDS) programme. It said the next phase of reforms should focus on building a unified, real-time digital platform capable of improving beneficiary targeting, strengthening supply-chain monitoring and reducing leakages in India’s food subsidy programme, which has nearly 800 million beneficiaries.
The recommendations come after the Centre completed the first phase of digitisation of the public distribution system (PDS). Under the initiative, around 205 million ration cards covering nearly 800 million beneficiaries have been digitised.
The report noted that these reforms have also resulted in the deletion of 67.7 million duplicate or ineligible ration cards between 2013 and December 2025, thereby improving the targeting of food subsidies.
Chaired by DMK MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, the panel said that the department of food and public distribution should ensure time-bound implementation of SMART-PDS across all states and Union territories, complete integration with agencies such as the Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and other ministries, and establish national dashboards, command-and-control centres, cloud infrastructure and technical helpdesks as core components of the new system.
The committee, however, said these gains must be consolidated by closing gaps in supply-chain computerisation, completing pending SMART-PDS modules, and continuing database purification to ensure that food subsidy benefits are redirected to genuine beneficiaries.
The report also noted that the department has identified 29.1 million suspect beneficiaries through data analytics, including 22 million “silent” ration cards, more than 3.4 million deceased beneficiaries, around 3 million duplicate beneficiaries, 560,000 beneficiaries aged over 100 years, and over 210,000 single-member ration cards where the sole beneficiary is below 18 years of age.
It recommended that field verification of these cases be completed in mission mode while ensuring that eligible beneficiaries are not wrongly excluded through robust grievance redressal mechanisms.
Unified digital platform
Among the panel’s key recommendations is the creation of a unified national digital platform integrating procurement, allocation, warehousing, transportation, ration card management, biometric authentication, grievance redressal and payments to enable real-time monitoring and data-driven policymaking. It also said interoperability, cyber security, cloud infrastructure and technical support should be treated as non-negotiable pillars of SMART-PDS implementation.
Despite significant digitisation, the committee observed wide disparities across states. While Bihar has achieved full digitisation with more than 98% Aadhaar seeding, Meghalaya has only 73% Aadhaar seeding. Telangana still has 80 fair price shops operating offline, Tamil Nadu has 403 fair price shops in areas without network connectivity, and Kerala has sought an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP)-based PDS platform.
To address these gaps, the committee recommended creating a structured cross-learning framework under SMART-PDS so that best-performing states can help lagging ones replicate successful practices through technical support, training and standard operating procedures.
The panel also flagged recurring operational issues such as biometric authentication failures among elderly beneficiaries and manual labourers, poor internet connectivity, incomplete module customisation, pending grievance redressal and uneven adoption of the Anna Chakra route-optimisation platform. While Bihar accepted nearly all optimised transport routes, the acceptance rate stood at 20% in Tamil Nadu and nil in Kerala, despite the projected logistics savings.
Tech initiatives
The panel also backed the wider deployment of technology initiatives such as Mera Ration, Anna Mitra and Anna Chakra. According to the report, Mera Ration 2.0 has crossed 10 million downloads, while Anna Mitra has been rolled out in four states. Developed with support from IIT Delhi and the World Food Programme (WFP), Anna Chakra has demonstrated potential annual transportation savings of around ₹250 crore, a 15-50% reduction in transport distance and nearly 30% lower carbon emissions across 30 states. The committee recommended time-bound nationwide adoption of these initiatives.
The report also endorsed the department’s proposal to pilot central bank digital currency (CBDC)-based food subsidy delivery, saying programmable digital tokens could improve transparency, reduce leakages and enable real-time monitoring of subsidy transfers. It recommended expanding the pilot in a phased manner after the initial rollout.
According to experts, the modernisation of the PDS should not be seen merely as a technology upgrade but as a reform to strengthen India’s food security architecture. “A unified SMART-PDS platform can improve targeting, reduce leakages and make subsidy delivery more transparent. However, technology must complement robust field verification and regular updating of beneficiary databases so that genuine households are not excluded from the safety net,” said Binod Anand, a farm expert and member of the government’s MSP committee.
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