JOIN USGovt seeks consensus on Food Bill
The UPA government is set to make changes in the National Food Security Bill to make sure that its nationwide implementation is not delayed by the tardy progress in the socio-economic and caste census and the ruling Congress reaps political dividends in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
A high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh approved in principle a proposal to bring 67 per cent of population under the food security net by doing away with classification of priority and general households proposed in the original Bill, which was introduced in Lok Sabha on December 22 last year and is now being vetted by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution.
Sources said that the government might place the proposed changes before the parliamentary panel with the request of incorporating those in its report to be tabled in the Lok Sabha.
Home Minister P Chidambaram, Union Defence Minister A K Antony, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Minister of State for Food and Consumer Affairs K V Thomas, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Committee chief C Rangarajan attended the two-hour long meeting at Prime Minister’s residence.
“We discussed Food Security Bill and issues related to the proposed Act such as availability of food grain and subsidy,” Thomas told media-persons after the meeting.
The original Bill sought to give 75 per cent of rural population and 50 per cent of people in urban areas legal entitlement to highly subsidized food-grain, with 46 per cent of the beneficiaries in villages being designated as priority households and the rest as general.
In urban areas, 28 per cent of the beneficiaries were proposed to be tagged as priority households and the remaining as general.
But since classification of priority and general households was to be done on the basis of the data generated by the socio-economic and caste census, the Congress-led UPA government was concerned over the possibility of the slow pace of the nationwide poverty estimation exercise delaying the implementation of the NFSB, which is believed to be close to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s heart.
The ruling Congress has been keen to get the NFSB passed by Parliament at the earliest, as it relies on the Bill to give a boost to its sagging fortunes ahead of the parliamentary polls in 2014.Several eminent civil society activists and economists, including members of Gandhi-led National Advisory
Council, as well as a section of the ruling Congress party proposed to do away with the classification of priority and general households.