It seems the way to a voter’s heart is through a ration card.

Source said the BJP-led government’s food and civil supplies department has recently ordered to cancel all the existing ration cards and print new ones which will carry two additional sheets listing all its achievements and plans and also a photograph of chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal.

The sources said the government is gearing up to use the ration cards of the 57 lakh families of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) as an electioneering tool.

Ration cards are authorised documents issued by the government authority to obtain benefits under the public distribution system. It records whether a beneficiary has received his allocated quota of rice or not.

In Assam, only rice is distributed under the NFSA.

Phani Bhusan Choudhury, a leader of the BJP’s ally AGP, is now the food and civil supplies minister.

“The government has asked the food and civil supplies department to print 60 lakh new ration cards, which can be distributed among the NFSA beneficiaries before the Lok Sabha elections. Considering Rs 15 as printing cost per ration card, the government will have to bear Rs 9 crore for the entire exercise,” said the source.

“At present, there is no need of new ration cards as the NFSA beneficiaries will be able to use their existing ration cards for at least two more years without any problem. What is baffling the officials of the food and civil supplies department are instructions to use photographs of the chief minister and whip up publicity about the government schemes and promises in the ration cards,” said the source.

On the printing of the new ration cards, the food and civil supplies minister told The Telegraph, “It has not been finalised yet. As the existing cards will expire in October, we shall print new ones.”

The department had used the photograph of former chief minister Tarun Gogoi in the earlier ration cards. But following a judgment of the Supreme Court imposing restriction on uses of photographs of political leaders in government flagship schemes, the department had asked all districts to cover the photograph of Gogoi on the cards.

The move has come just after the department printed 80,000 new ration cards last month to be distributed among the NFSA beneficiaries. To print those 80,000 cards the department had to borrow Rs 12 lakh from the contingency fund of the government, which was regularised in the autumn session of the Assembly.

There are 2.48 crore beneficiaries under the NFSA in Assam.