Spanco Telesystems and Solutions Ltd, one of the leading System Integration & BPO companies in India, has bagged the order to completely overhaul the operation of the Public Distribution System from the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection (FCS&CP) Department, Government of Maharashtra. The scheme is designed to ensure that the right beneficiary avails the desired amount of food grains and other benefits. The entire rationing system in the state will undergo a sea change with the issuing of over 1.8 crore computerized Bar code based Laminated Ration cards to every household. Speaking on the occasion Chairman & Managing Director of Spanco Mr. Kapil Puri said “We are proud to partner with the Government of Maharashtra on a project like this which will benefit households across the length and breadth of the state. It has been our constant endeavor to provide innovative & holistic solutions for complex issues”. 

The project will be completed in 3 years and cover approx 106740 Fair Price Shops, 354 Taluk supply offices, 33 District Supply offices, 5 regional offices, 44 rationing offices. The scope of work includes Data Entry, Digitization of existing 1.8 crore beneficiaries, capturing of photograph & fingerprint of the head of the family of each household, use of biometric fingerprint matching to avoid duplication of cards, printing and preparation of bar code based laminated Ration cards. Apart from this all the 474 FCS offices including Head Office, Divisional Offices and Taluka offices have to be networked by using MPLS/VPN broadband connectivity. A high-tech Data center shall be deployed and be connected through 4Mbps link to the rest of the department offices across the state. All the FCS offices will have to be given a desktop computer along with printers and scanners, and 33 various Application Software modules will have to be developed and integrated. All the 106740 Fair Price Shops shall be issued with Point of Sale Terminals having Smart Card, Magnetic Stripe and Bar code readers to read the computerized Ration card. The transaction done at the ration shop shall be stored in the POS terminal and uploaded to the Data center in regular intervals. Approx. 900 GPS instruments shall be fitted in the vehicles carrying food grains from FCI go-down to State go-down and they will be tracked from the Data center, so that pilferage can be stopped. The entire solution shall be designed by using centralized Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and all the applications will be hosted from the Data center.

Spanco has partnered with MASTEK as its partner in this project for developing the entire application software. Spanco will deploy approx. 1100 manpower across the state to run the project and additional 1500 manpower shall be deployed to do the Data entry and Digitization of all the existing 1.8 crore beneficiary records to complete the entire scope of work and make the system live within 8 months of signing the contract. 

The beneficiary/household will avail the computerized Ration card and pay a nominal fee fixed by the department for it. The fees for various types of cards like, Annapurna, Antyordaya, BPL, APL and White, shall be notified by the Government through a gazette notification.  

Sourced From: Sampark Public Relations Pvt Ltd