Long queues outside the ration shop at GD Market on Friday. Pictures by Saradindu Chaudhury

If you are yet to complete formalities to digitise your ration card even after the three-day special drive for Salt Lake is over, fret not. State food and supplies minister Jyotipriyo Mallick said on Wednesday that the camp, for cardholders to get their ration card information updated on a computer system, will continue till March 31.

As reported in The Telegraph Salt Lake on February 21 in the article “Ration shops on high tech route”, a special mop-up drive had been ordered in Salt Lake over the last weekend to speed up the digitisation drive.

Cardholders are having to visit their ration shop with their existing ration cards, along with a previously collected form furnished with basic details, and present them to the data entry operators at the shops.

The camps are shut on Mondays and open till noon on Sundays.

Long queues, flying tempers

“The rationwallah at Falguni Abasan turned away my mother saying he had run out of forms. I had to go to collect the same and returned the next morning,” said Debanjana Ghatak, a resident of Labony Estate who had decided to get the job done in course of the weekend’s special drive. “The queue was long and moved slowly. I had to stand in two separate lines, one to get my card stamped and the other to submit the data to the data entry operator. It didn’t help that others confused me with wrong information,” she said on Saturday.

Ghatak said the vendor shouted at her when he saw her family members’ cards and realised that they do not use the cards frequently. “All I know is that our domestic help makes purchases with the card. I returned home tired and with a heavy heart,” she recounts.

At BJ Market, where a scuffle had occurred earlier this month when the operator refused to cater to more than 20 people, the process seems to have smoothened now. On Saturday morning, there was only a trickle. “It is taking time only in case the existing card is too old or torn, making the information on it illegible. In such cases, the ration dealer is required to open his register and manually search for the missing details,” said a member of the technical department of the ration card digitisation system, who had come to oversee the operations at BJ Market. The shop has a customer base of about 12,000.

Some problems persist. “I got my work done in 15 minutes today but yesterday I waited for an hour and no one showed up,” said Bindu Zutshi of CK Block.

The operators at BJ Market later confessed that they had been packing up before time if the crowd dried up. “But we are extending the hours if there are people in queue even after closing time,” one of them said.

One of the few cardholders to visit the BD Market camp on Sunday

Lots of cards are being brought in by domestic helps employed with the card-holders. The data entry operator is accepting such cards but the names of the card holders’ family members and their relationship with the head of the family need to be clearly mentioned on the given form. That is posing a hurdle in some cases.

“I’ve brought six cards from the household that I work in at EE Block. But I couldn’t get the work done today as I couldn’t tell them the relation of the family members with the head of the family,” said a domestic help in queue at BJ Market.

At GD Market, the queues are still long. At 11am on Friday, there were more than 40 people waiting, a few under the shelter of the market and most people out in the sun. Things moved fairly fast and no one complained, but the size of the queue has been scaring away others.

“There’s a serpentine queue irrespective of whether I go in the day or in the evening so I keep putting off my visit to the ration shop,” said Abhradeep Banerjee, a Sector V employee and a resident of GD Block. “I don’t know how long this camp will last. What if it ends before I find time to queue up? And if that does happen, will my old card become obsolete?” he wondered.

Smooth sail

Fair Price Shop 944 in AE Market has come up with an effective solution to deal with queues and is getting more than 250 entries processed every day. “We are first entertaining people in a hurry or who have come from far-off areas. We are asking the rest to leave their cards behind and return later. We are processing those when there is a lull,” said Chanchal Das, a member of the staff.

The AE Market ration office is on the first floor but senior citizens are not having to climb up. “They are visiting our shop on the ground floor and we are running up with their cards,” said Keshav Chandra Saha, who works at the ration shop.

The queues have tapered off on their own at BD Market and on Sunday morning one had to wait 30 minutes for a cardholder to turn up for digitisation.

“There was a rush in the early days of the camp but now after a month almost all our 8,200 customers have got their cards digitised,” said Sumit Chakraborty, owner of Fair Price Shop 883 at BD Market. This shop is now holding the camp only in the mornings.

Frequently asked questions at the digitisation camps:

Q. Do I have to bring my Aadhaar card form to get my ration card digitised?

No.

Q. My daughter has got married and moved elsewhere but her ration card still shows this Salt Lake address. Can I update her card here?

Yes.

Q. I do not have a ration card. Can I get one made here?

No. For this one must visit the Bidhannagar Rationing Office at Bikash Bhavan.