President Pranab Mukherjee Friday promulgated the national food security ordinance, which aims to provide subsidised food grain to around 67 percent of India's 1.2 billion people.
The measure is expected to be a game-changer for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, coming ahead of the polls to five state assemblies this year-end, and the general elections of 2014.
The food security bill, one of the big-ticket welfare initiatives of the UPA and a pet project of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, is expected to provide subsidised food grains to around 800 million people.
This would entail an initial cost of around Rs.1.3 lakh crore to the government.
(Published 05 July 2013, 11:36 IST)
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