With several State Governments voicing opposition to the Union Government's National Food Security Act, 2011, which was tabled in Parliament recently, the Union Minister of State for Food and Public Distribution, Prof K V Thomas, said that he will meet the Chief Ministers of the concerned States to allay apprehensions. The Minister said that all the States stood to gain from the proposed bill.
Rice will be distributed to the States at Rs 3 a kg, down from the current Rs 5 a kg, Prof K V Thomas said. In the case of rice, the Union Government bears a subsidy burden of almost Rs 16 a kg. Similarly the price at which wheat and millets would be supplied to the States will be brought down to Rs 2 and Re 1 per kg.
While the public distribution system was targeted at the poorer sections of the population, the middle and lower middle class remained its biggest beneficiaries. The Government was hoping to arrest diversion of subsidised food grains from their targeted population by augmenting and computerising the distribution network.
By implementing an end-to-end computerised solution, the Government was hoping to reduce diversion of food grains from the system, which is today as high as 40 per cent. A sum of Rs 4,000 crore has been proposed for the computerisation, which will start from the FCI warehouse gate to the ration shop dealer, and all the way to the individual consumers' households.
Under the Food Security Bill, the food subsidy is poised to increase from Rs 63,000 crore to Rs 90,000 crore, the Minister said. This was also partly because the total number of beneficiaries based on the 2011 Census was expected to be higher than the earlier number of beneficiaries based on the 2001 Census.