lucknow after turning out to be the backbone of centres flagship free ration scheme during the pandemic around 80000 public distribution scheme pds shops of up may touch the higher realm of utility by providing an array of public services including distribution of lpg cylinders sale of registration stamps rural banking and for issuance of aadhaarsources said that the state government was mulling over the proposal for execution of services from the pds shops which have a deeper penetration especially in the rural areas of the state officials in the food and civil supplies department said that the idea was to make the pds shops financially more viable besides wheeling out services hitherto not available in certain pocketsadditional commissioner food and civil supplies anil kumar dubey said that if things fell in place pds shops would work like common service centres cscs where people can avail other essential services besides ration he however maintained that the conversion will be voluntary since there are many pds shops which are located in relatively heavy business areas turning ration shops in csc could also help in employment generation as well he affirmedsources said that the oil marketing companies have already submitted a proposal for rolling out 5 kg lpg cylinders from these pds shopsat the same time the rural development department has proposed initiating rural banking with the help of banking correspondents essentially women which were being engaged during the peak of the pandemic likewise the department of stamp and registration has approached the state government to make available revenue stamps from the ration outletsthis comes close on the heels of the state governments step to enable payment of electricity bills at the ration shops sources said that the facility has proved to be significant for rural areas where electricity bill payment has been lowdata updated till monday showed that as many as 79457 ration shops were operational in the state while the total number of beneficiaries under national food security nfs scheme and antyodaya was to the tune of 1497 crore of this 1489 crore had been validated through aadhaar seedingbetween december 2021 and march 2022 the centre and the state government together provided 1871 lakh metric tonnes of wheat and 1275 lakh metric tonnes of rice likewise 135 lakh mt each of oil salt and gram were also provided to the beneficiariesthe ration shops had attained a centrestage after the centre flagged off the pm gareeb kalyan anna yojana pmgkay on march 26 2020 when the corona triggered lockdown was imposed for the first time while the pmgkay has been extended till september the state government will provide free ration till june sources said that the state government may extend it even further