Abstract: The Government of India in an effort to ensure fair supply of food items under PDS to the targeted underprivileged sections as per the eligibility fixed by the Government of India. In spite of the best efforts by Government officials at various levels, there are a few bottle-necks and inconveniences to the targeted citizens in availing the services provided. All these happen because every job in the ration shop involves manual work. Because of intervention of manual work there are lots of illegal activity occurs. As solution to this problem the proposed system proposes a transparent and highly scalable Ration Distribution (Food Distribution) system with biometric authentication. The conventional paper based ration card is replaced by smart card. The system is placed at each ration shop which is connected to the server through web. Every time before ration collection each user has to login into the system. The user need not to pay the cash money as the appropriate balance is deducted from users bank account, so there is no direct involvement of ration shop owner in transaction. The transaction details are send to users mobile. The government can have overall control and monitoring at each ration shop through web. In addition user as well as ration distributor will get SMS based alert about arrival of commodities. As a result, this new e-PDS system can reduce possible human errors and provide accurate information of public distribution system at any point.

Keywords: Fair Price Shop, Public Distribution System, Unique Identity.