Of late, state government had been receiving various complaints of pilferage in PDS shops and to prevent them smart cards were introduced replacing the ration cards. Similarly, Aadhaar cards were seeded with smart cards to add authenticity to the smart card holders. Despite these efforts, state government could not stop the pilferages in ration shops and so the system of bio-metric verification had been added to ensure zero pil-ferage in PDS shops.

The state had also issued the system for using the bio-metric authentication in ePOS machines.

Meanwhile, the Chief Minister also launched the distribution of free face masks scheme for all ration card holders in other districts of the state except Chennai. An official release said, Palaniswami formally launched the scheme by handing over face masks to five persons at the Secretariat. In the first phase, a total of 4.44 crore masks, two reusable masks for each person, would be provided for cards through fair price shops.

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