Govt measures have helped bring down arrears to sugarcane farmers by ₹3,000 crore: Paswan

Food and Public Distribution Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday said there was nothing wrong in the Delhi Government’s proposal to provide home delivery of ration to beneficiaries under the targeted public distribution system (PDS).

“It’s a good thing. But, what would happen to those running fair price shops in the Capital. We have to keep that in mind,” said Paswan, addressing media persons here.

The Aam Admi Party government’s move to provide doorstep delivery of essential services, including ration, had run into trouble with the Lt Governor, allegedly under pressure from the BJP, refusing to give it the green signal. Paswan, who presided over a national consultation meeting in which Food Ministers from 15 States participated, said the States could think of providing doorstep delivery of foodgrains to the needy to help avoid instances of starvation deaths, similar to those reported recently from Jharkhand.

“We have given guidelines to all States to ensure that there are no starvation deaths because of non-delivery of PDS grains. As a precautionary measure, we have asked the States to provide for doorstep delivery of subsidised grains,” he said.

He further asked State governments to keep an eye on beneficiaries who are not lifting their ration for a period of three consecutive months. “It could be possible that such beneficiary may be rich and they do not require and such ration card can be cancelled. There could be another possibility that some beneficiaries are not able to visit ration shop because of old age and physical disability. In that case, we need to provide home delivery of ration,” the Minister said.The Minister said the subsidy rate at which foodgrains are supplied through ration shops has not been revised since the National Food Security Act in 2013. PDS rates have been kept unchanged for rice at ₹3/kg, wheat at ₹2/kg and coarse grains at ₹1/kg.

Highlighting the NDA government’s intervention in the sugar sector, Paswan said the measures the Government initiated has helped bring down dues to sugarcane farmers by ₹3,000 crore to ₹19,000 crore. The Minister also said that in the current rabi marketing season, the procurement of wheat has been 355 lakh tonnes (lt) which was much more than the estimated procurement of 320 lt. Rabi rice procurement, on other hand, was 46 lt against the target of 55 lt.

During 2017-18, a sum of ₹38,000 crore was released as food subsidy to the States where decentralised procurement scheme is in force, while ₹1,10,982 crore was released to Food Corporation of India as food subsidy, he said.

In the meeting, the Odisha government sought higher allocation of subsidised foodgrains taking into account six per cent increase in the state population to 4.30 crore.

The Kerala government, which is implementing universal PDS, also demanded allocation of more foodgrains and pulses.