The Union Minister of State for Agriculture, Food & Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs Professor KV Thomas has said that the Centre will soon bring Food Security Bill in the Parliament. “The UPA government is committed to provide food to all citizens and hence would soon bring this bill which will make the public distribution system (PDS) more effective,” he said while addressing the workers at Congress Bhawan on Wednesday noon.
“The Congress is continuously taking steps to improve the level of living standard of common man. The objective of bringing Food Security Bill is to ensure that the infants, pregnant women and children below 14 get nutritious food and villagers and impoverished section get benefited by the Centrally-sponsored schemes,” he said.
He informed that the Centre was giving subsidy on rice, wheat and other food grains at the rate of Rs 18 per kilogram and had made provision of about Rs 60000 crore for the purpose in its budget in the current fiscal.
Expressing his concerns over rising complaints regarding irregularities in implementation of PDS in state, Thomas said, “The Chhattisgarh government should ensure transparency in the system. The Centre too is mulling over the factors through which it could tighten noose on states for impartial implementation of PDS.”
When the senior Congress leaders pointed out that the state government was not procuring paddy at minimum support price (MSP), Thomas said, he himself learnt about it through the partymen in New Delhi. “The Centre has given full liberty to the state government to procure food grains at MSP. However, if the BJP government was not procuring farmers’ paddy in the current season then it is injustice to them,” he said.
He claimed that Congress had always been a well-wisher of the farmers and had continuously increased paddy MSP in the past seven years. He informed that the Centre would also launch an ‘additional storage scheme’ to increase the storage facilities of the food grains.
When some of the party leaders expressed their displeasure over the minister’s generosity in praising the BJP government after he reviewed the PDS implementation methods and inspected some of the ration shops on June 21, Thomas tried to give explanation saying that he never intend to extol the Raman Singh government.
On the occasion, PCC Nandkumar Patel, PCC incharge general secretary Subhash Sharma, general secretaries duo Rajendra Tiwari and Ramesh Varlyani, MLA Kuldeep Juneja, DCC president Inderchand Dhariwal, working president of Pradesh Mahila Congress (PMC) Kalpana Patel, PCC media incharge Mahendra Chhabra, NSUI state president Sanjeev Shukla and other party workers were present at large number.
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