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With Kerala, Tamil Nadu rolling out NFSA, Act implemented across India
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Saturday, 05 November, 2016, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Our Bureau, New Delhi
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fiogf49gjkf0d Following the rollout of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in the southern states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the Act has been implemented in all the states and Union Territories.
This was stated by Ram Vilas Paswan, minister of consumer affairs, food and public distribution, who added that as a result, 81.34 crore persons would get wheat at Rs 2 per kg and rice at Rs 3 per kg.
At the current coverage, the monthly allocation of foodgrains to states under the Act is about 45.5 lakh tons, with subsidy implication of about Rs 11,726 crore per month (Rs 1,40,700 crore per year).
Paswan stated that the Centre would now focus on further reforms in the public distribution system (PDS), including end-to-end computerisation of the system, for which the states and Union Territories are being technically and financially assisted.
He added that was important to bring in transparency in the functioning of the PDS, a vital feature of the NFSA, in order to check leakages and diversion of foodgrains.
Highlighting other initiatives taken by the Centre to make the PDS leak-proof, the minister stated that the beneficiary’s database had been digitised in all the 36 states, wherein information was available right upto the beneficiary level and was in the public domain.
Online allocation of foodgrains had been done in 28 states, while the foodgrain supply chain was computerised in 18 states. The linkage of ration cards with Aadhaar is 71 per cent at the moment, and 100 per cent linkage will be achieved.
Foodgrain losses of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) were brought down to 0.04 per cent, and major FCI depots have been made online.
Paswan said that direct benefit transfer, another significant step towards better targeting and leakage-free distribution of foodgrains, was being carried out in two different modes.
In the first mode, food subsidy is being transferred in cash into the bank accounts of beneficiaries, who then have the choice to buy foodgrains from the open market. This has begun in the Union Territories of Chandigarh, Puducherry and the urban areas of Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
The second mode involves the automation of fair price shops for distribution of foodgrains through an electronic point of sale (e-PoS) device which authenticates beneficiaries at the time of distribution and also electronically captures the quantum of food grains distributed to the family. As of October 31, 2016, e-PoS devices were operational in 1,61,854 fair price shops.
For the smooth functioning of the PDS, state governments are also being provided Central assistance to meet the expenses of intra-state transportation and handling of foodgrains and fair price shop dealers’ margins. The assistance for fair price shop dealers’ margins’ also contains a component of assistance for installation and operation of PoS devices at fair price shops. Paswan stated that so far, Rs 1,874 crore had been released to state governments by the Government of India in 2016-17.
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