By Parimal A Dabhi / The Indian Express
The Patan district collector has directed that all the 436 ration card holders belonging to Kanosan village in the district’s Saraswati tehsil can now buy ration from neighbouring village Edla and will not have to purchase the same from a fair price shop (FPS) run by a Dalit in their village.
Collector Arvind Vijayan has transferred the ration cards of the 436 households in Kanosan to the FPS in Edla in an order dated September 12.
The order comes after majority of the ration card holders in the village – Kanosan is dominated by the Thakor community (non-Dalits) – had around one-and-a-half years ago stopped buying their monthly ration from the FPS run by Kanti Parmar, a Dalit.
Kanosan is one of the Samras villages of Gujarat. Under the Samras scheme of the state government, villagers choose their ward members and sarpanch with consensus and do not go for polls. Such villages get special incentives from the state. A Samras status also indicates “social harmony” in a village.
Among other allegations, the Thakors have accused Kanti of threatening to get them booked in false cases under the Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocity) Act – commonly known as Atrocity Act. Kanti and his family have refuted the allegations and are now considering to challenge the collector’s order in court.
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