Telangana and Andhra Pradesh lead the country when it comes to seeding PDS data with Aadhaar, as a result of which there has been a sharp fall in the number of fake PDS users, reports Sandip Das in New Delhi. In Krishna district in AP, each PDS shop has machines to capture biometrics — it takes a few seconds to authenticate it from the Aadhaar database — and the state estimates it saves Rs 8.2 crore per month by weeding out fake users while only genuine users get their rations. For all of AP, the number of fake users fell by 17% after using Aadhaar’s de-duplication software. Extrapolating savings in Krishna district to the all-India level means a saving of R27,000 crore. The pity is big states like UP and Bihar which have most PDS users have made little progress in cleaning up their records using Aadhaar.
