Govt steps up scrutiny of Shiv Bhojan scheme

MUMBAI: Two chapatis, one bowl of vegetable curry, one bowl of dal, and one serving of rice for just ₹10

MUMBAI: Two chapatis, one bowl of vegetable curry, one bowl of dal, and one serving of rice for just ₹10. For thousands across Maharashtra, this is pure sustenance – a simple and affordable meal served under the Shiv Bhojan Yojna, a subsidised scheme introduced by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government more than six years ago.

Govt steps up scrutiny of Shiv Bhojan scheme

But the scheme is leaving a bad taste, pitting operators against the state govenrment. On one hand, those running the meal centres, many of them workers of political parties, say rising operating costs are making the scheme’s implementation financially unviable. But the government says what’s rising are complaints against the meal centres, which are allegedly overcharging beneficiaries and inflating the number of beneficiaries to claim bogus subsidies.

As a result, the state Food and Civil Supplies Department introduced stricter controls on October 1. It has made FSSAI registration and licensing mandatory, besides making it compulsory to preserve CCTV footage of these centres’ operations for three months, from the earlier one month.

“We have also empowered senior government officials to pay surprise visits to these centres as we have found a nexus between district-level officials and these centres in malpractices,” said a government official.

The Shiv Bhojan scheme was launched by the state government in January 2020. There are a total 1,867 operational Shiv Bhojan centres in the state, against a sanctioned strength of 2,256. The number of meals served on Monday was 163,000, against a target of 200,000 meals a day.

The stricter controls come at a time when operators claim that rising costs have forced some centres to shut – 50 in the recent past. They have also been protesting delays in the release of subsidy payments. The government, however, says it cleared pending dues of ₹72 crore for three months — March to May — two weeks ago. Payments for the remaining months are expected only in January, after supplementary demands are approved during the winter session of the state legislature.

Kayyum Shaikh, a member of the Maharashtra Shiv Bhojan Chalak Kriti Samiti, said, “Around 50% of the centres that shut were unable to afford the cost of cooking oil, pulses and cooking gas, which has doubled in the last six years since the scheme was launched.

“Even rents have increased manifold, but the government has not increased the subsidy paid to operators. Every month, 10 to 40 centres shut down, and more than 300 have closed in recent times. The stricter norms will result in more centres shutting,” he claimed.

Under the scheme, the state government provides operators – NGOs, self-help groups and small hoteliers, although many centres are run by workers of various political parties – a subsidy of ₹25 per meal in rural areas and ₹40 in urban areas. Operators are allowed to charge beneficiaries ₹10 and must maintain digital records of beneficiaries.

The state government incurs an expenditure of around ₹18.5 crore a month, or ₹227 crore annually on the subsidy.

On the government’s stricter norms, Kiran Meshram, a Shiv Bhojan centre operator from Vidarbha, alleged, “This is a form of scrutiny similar to the exercise undertaken for the Ladki Bahin scheme, to prune the list of beneficiaries. Operators are finding it increasingly difficult to run the centres for two main reasons. First, government grants are released after several months, forcing operators to meet expenses from their own pockets. Second, the subsidy rates were fixed six years ago when the scheme was launched, and the cost of raw materials has increased since then. The government has not considered revising the rates.”