Hyderabad: Telangana irrigation and civil supplies minister Uttam Kumar Reddy, on Wednesday, July 2, said that the state government would begin distributing new ration cards from July 14 at Tirumalagiri in Tungaturthi constituency.
According to a press release, the programme will be formally inaugurated by Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy with deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka. Addressing a review meeting at the Nalgonda District Collectorate, Uttam Kumar Reddy directed collectors to complete verification of all eligible applications by July 13 to ensure no deserving family was left out.
He stressed that the beneficiary selection process for the new ration cards in Telangana must be transparent and corruption-free. “The government’s focus is to ensure that every eligible person gets a ration card without any discrimination,” he said. The minister added that review meetings will now be held twice a month to maintain strict oversight.
Uttam Kumar Reddy explained that Telangana’s flagship free fine rice scheme delivers six kg of rice per person every month to nearly 3.10 crore people, about 84% of the population through fair price shops, at a cost of over ₹13,000 crore annually. “In June, July, and August, the state provided three months’ worth of rations at once to ensure uninterrupted supply, distributing 18 kg per person, 105 kg per Antyodaya family, and 30 kg per Annapurna family,” he said in a press release.
He sharply criticised the previous BRS government for neglecting food security and ration card enrolment in Telangana. “At the time of Telangana’s formation in 2014, there were 89.73 lakh white ration cards, but the BRS added only around 49,000 new cards, mostly during by-elections, ignoring lakhs of families,” Uttam Kumar Reddy pointed out.
He said the Congress government had received lakhs of new applications and was addressing them in a mission-driven manner.
Several legislators used the occasion to raise pending issues, including repairs and maintenance of canals, land acquisition problems, funds for resettlement, and the need for restarting applications for social welfare schemes.
