India, Sept. 29 -- The Centre is set to disable the ration entitlements of 15.8 million beneficiaries from October who have not used their ration cards for the past six months, HT was told. The move is the latest step in the government's effort to clean up the public distribution system (PDS) database and weed out inactive, duplicate and otherwise suspect beneficiaries.

The beneficiaries' names will not be deleted immediately from the database. Their ration cards will first be temporarily disabled, giving them three months to establish that they are genuine beneficiaries. If they complete the e-KYC process within this period, their cards will be activated again, a senior government official told HT on condition of anonymity.

The three-m...