BENGALURU: As many as 150 of the 208 families staying at Hakki Pikki Colony, Kengeri Upanagara, 20km from the heart of the city, are going hungry as they haven’t been able to collect their share of rations from neighbourhood fair price depots for periods varying from a few months to a year.The residents, most of whom are Hakki Pikki tribes and are itinerant or roadside vendors of knickknacks, say their woes began after they seeded their ration cards with their Aadhaar numbers as mandated by the state government.According to the aggrieved residents, shop owners shoo them away citing various reasons like cancellation of ration cards and Aadhaar-enabled point of sale (PoS) machines’ failure to read fingerprints. Seeding of Aadhaar cards of all family members with the ration card was meant to enable any member collect rations by getting his/her fingerprints read. Beena and Munna, working for the Sarva Janara Prarthanalaya, which describes itself as a gypsy charitable trust, said almost 150 families in the colony have been affected due to an erratic public distribution system.“Only 50-odd families of the 208 are successfully receiving rations. It’s not as if they don’t know the procedure for seeding, yet they are suffering. Aadhaar has made their lives difficult by excluding them from the benefits of PDS,” said Beena.Maligehu, 56, said she hasn’t been getting her monthly allocation of rice for five months now; her four-member family is entitled to 20 kg of rice. “The person at the ration shop told me that my card has been cancelled. I went to the nearest BangaloreOne centre and the food and civil supplies office in Rajajinagar, but in vain. I haven’t eaten properly in months. Sometimes, we rely on our neighbours and don’t know where the next meal will come from,” she said.Residents of the colony say life was much better earlier, when all they had to do was show their ration cards to get supplies. Before Aadhaar seeding, Vajara, 28, and her husband Ramakrishna, 37, used to get 20kg rice per month, five each for the couple and their two kids. But for the last few months, the PoS machine at the fair price depot has been unable to read her and her husband’s fingerprints. Result: they have been losing out on half the allocated amount of rice.Some residents also claimed that not collecting ration for even a month resulted in cards being declared ‘dead’. Most residents of the colony travel as far as Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to sell their wares. Reetha, a doll-maker, travels frequently for work and is away for several days at a stretch. In her absence, her friend would take her daughter Archana to the fair price shop to collect rations for the family. However, six months ago, Reetha’s family, which couldn’t collect rations for a couple of months, was told that their card is no longer valid. Rajendra Bai, another resident entitled to 20 kg rice, too hasn’t been receiving anything from the shop. She was told her card has been cancelled.“We have to buy rice from other provision stores for Rs 30-40 per kg. The average income of most families in the Hakki Pikki Colony is Rs 3,000-5,000 per month. How can we buy overpriced rice when we can barely sustain ourselves with what we earn,” asked Rajendra Bai. Also, in some cases, only the ration card-holder’s fingerprint is considered valid. Ration shops too are open only for a few days a month when supplies come. If residents miss that window, they are helpless till the next month, said Bai. And then there are some like 32-year-old Chandra who, despite raising a request for Aadhaar seeding, hasn’t received the activation message from the food office.“If rice is not meant for the poor, then where is it going? The owners must be hoarding and selling them for higher rates,” said Sumalatha, another resident.