Patna: Fertiliser retailers in Bihar will be able to sell using point-of-sale machines from January 2018, and the retailer as well as farmers will have to provide their Aadhaar details to prevent fake sales.

Farmers who don't have Aadhaar numbers will have to provide Aadhaar registration details along with either a copy of the Kisan credit card or voters' ID.

Point-of-sale machines (POS) are linked with a data centre where details of any sale are updated allowing real time updates about the volume of fertilisers sold in the state. Also, these machines, which remain connected through internet by SIM cards, take the biometric input of the purchaser, ruling out the possibility of generating fake bills.

"The step has been taken in the light of Centre's directive which talks of weeding out leakage in subsidy that is given to fertiliser companies by the central government," said an agriculture department official associated with the implementation of the new system.

Now, fertiliser packets are sold to customers at subsidised rates and companies are reimbursed the subsidy that buyers get.

"It has been observed that due to leakage in the system the government was ending up giving subsidy on volume of fertiliser which was more than the actual use by farmers," the official said.

"The Centre says that around half of the subsidy money of Rs 70,000 crore per annum in the country was going to the wrong hands and hence the states have been asked to start the POS system for fertiliser sales."

Bihar needs 24,362 POS machines. The Centre has supplied 22,000 machines; the rest are on the way.

Retailers have already taken 15,000 machines from the agriculture department and they are being trained on how to use the machine.

The machines are being provided to the retailers free of cost. They only have to bear the recurring cost of printer paper attached to the machine for generating bills.

"Going by the present pace of POS machine supply to retailers, we are hoping to equip all the fertiliser shops of the state with these machines by December 25 so that the system could be made functional by January next year," said the official.

A fertiliser retailer from East Champaran district said they were in a wait and watch situation. "The new system is technology-dependent and one can assess its functional efficacy only use," he added.