State’s response sought on ration dealers’ plea
The Kerala High Court on Thursday sought the response of the State government on a plea by the All Kerala Retail Ration Dealers Association seeking to do away with biometric authentication for those buying ration under the ration card portability scheme. The petition was filed by Baby Thomas, State secretary of the association. He said the insistence by the government on biometric authentication of such ration consumers was absurd as COVID-19 was spreading. In fact, the spread of COVID-19 was increasing day by day in the country. In such a situation, if the use of fingerprint for biometric authentication was insisted upon, the ration dealers, their employees, families as well as the entire society would run the high risk of contracting the disease. This was more so as the ration dealers hardly knew card holder/beneficiary using portability scheme, their place of residence or whereabouts.
Manual transaction
The petitioner sought to issue an order allowing the ration dealers to use manual transaction in the e-POS machine for public distribution system, after temporarily doing away with the OTP (one-time password) and biometric authentication modes of transaction for those buying ration under portability scheme.
