Last Updated on January 25, 2021 at 6:42 pm
The Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department has been hit by a mega scam worth crores of rupees regarding the distribution of kerosene oil. It has been alleged that around four lakh litres of lamp oil is being sold to black market each month in South Kashmir.
This information is revealed by a junior officer who disclosed that he was receiving excess supplies estimating eighty-five thousand (85,000) litres of Kerosene oil each month. Assistant Director Pulwama, wrote a letter to Deputy Director (Supplies) Kashmir asking his directions in dealing with the excess supplies of Kerosene oil which has been received. He looks after distribution of essential supplies in the district.
The Assistant Director FCS&CA Pulwama told that PDS K-oil for 71460 NFSA (PHH/AAY) householders is being issued. According to sub-clause 6(2) of the SRO 285, there is a requirement of 2.14 lakh litres of kerosene oil every month however his office has been provided 3,00,000 (three lakh litres) of K-oil and so, there is surplus/excess allocation of 85,620 litres of k-oil to district Pulwama. He also requested the Deputy Director (Supplies) Kashmir to withdraw surplus allocation. The department has to distribute 3 litres of kerosene oil to every priority household on subsidized rates. The remaining oil has to be equally distributed among NPHH category beneficiaries not having LPG connection.
There are allegations that the kerosene oil wasn’t being distributed to the BPL families as per procedure. An Anantnag resident told Early Times that many times, they would get 2 or 2.5 litres per family.
However, never before has an officer of the department disclosed that he was receiving surplus quantities of Kerosene oil. On applying same formula to other districts of South Kashmir then out of around 13 lakh K-oil liters, only approximately 9 lakh liters is being distributed among the genuine beneficiaries and rest of the surplus quantity is being sold in Black-Market.
The South Kashmir-Anantnag, Pulwama, Shopian and Kulgam regions require 9 lakh liters of kerosene oil for 3 lakh families falling under priority category (PHH/AAY), however these regions receive around 13 lakh liters of oil every month. Anantnag has 1.34 lakh priority households, Anantnag receives 5.4 lakh liters every month. While 4 lakh liters gets distributed among the beneficiaries, the government offers public no record of what exactly it does with the rest of oil.
Similarly, Kulgam gets 2.4 lakh litres of K-oil for 58 thousand families and there is no record offered to the public for the rest of 65094 litres of oil. The FCS&CA Department officials are demanding that a fair probe should take place into this scam and top officials involved should be punished.
