Mantra Biometric Devices Employed by Uttar Pradesh Government Food Distribution System

Ahmedabad, India, July 26, 2019 –(PR.com)– India’s public distribution system is the largest public commodities’ distribution network in the nation. Currently, PDS is playing a vital role in the Government’s policies for managing the food economy. The primary function of PDS is to distribute food and non-edible items to entitled beneficiaries at subsidized rates through a wide-spread network of fair price shops.

Targeted Public Distribution System (TDPS) in India purchases staple food grains like wheat and rice from the farmers and allocates to the state government. Then, the state governments disburse these food grains to the fair price shop (commonly known as ration shops). The ration shops further distribute the staple food grains to eligible beneficiary families at a subsidized price by identifying their identity through ration cards.

The Department of Food and Public Distribution was unable to reach genuine beneficiaries due to fraud, and duplicate identity, which created the wide-scale pilferage in the system. So, to bring transparency and to lower down the pilferage; the Government developed a system to identify the beneficiaries with the help of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication.

The beneficiaries are enrolled in the Aadhaar system, and their biometrics data is stored in the UIDAI’s server. Only after successful biometric verification through UIDAI server, the beneficiaries are entitled to receive the food grains. Thus, by implementing the Aadhaar biometric identification system, governing bodies can track the details on the amount of wheat/rice given to the beneficiary in real-time.

Recently, Uttar Pradesh Government has implemented Mantra’s Aadhaar-enabled biometric devices in 19,661 fair price shops across the western districts of UP. These fair price shops are supplying 1.39 lakh metric tonnes of staple food per month to the beneficiaries. On an average, 6.25 lakh transactions are taking place every month, with 86 lakh eligible families getting the benefit of the system.

Mantra Softech India Pvt. Ltd. is one of the leaders in biometric & RFID industry and largest manufacturer of biometric devices in the Indian Biometric Market. The company has its own manufacturing and R&D facility and supports “Make in India” initiative. Mantra Fingerprint Sensors and IRIS Sensors are used in various flagship programs of Government, such as Aadhaar Enabled Biometrics Attendance System (AEBAS), Jeevan Pramaan, Aadhaar Based Digital Signature, MSSDA Program, PMKVY, MANAS, VTP Program, Aajivika Program, MNREGA, Ayushman Bharat Yojana and many more.