PM seeks details of objections to food security Bill

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Monday sought details of objections to the proposed National Food Security Bill before taking a decision on the Planning Commission declaring around 400 million Indians poor. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 20, 2010, 19:52:38 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on Monday sought details of objections to the proposed National Food Security Bill before taking a decision on the Planning Commission declaring around 400 million Indians poor.

“We received a call from the PMO seeking details of our objections,” said Kavita Srivastava of Right to Food Campaign, a civil society group seeking food entitlement for all.

The Bill would entitle every below poverty line (BPL) family to 25 kg of grains, an Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) had decided. But following Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s intervention, it decided on a review and asked the plan panel to determine the number of poor in India.

“We’ve agreed with Suresh Tendulkar committee report that 37.2 per cent of Indians are poor as per the 2004-05 survey,” Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Monday.

For the latest figures, the plan panel will have to wait till the end of 2011, when the National Sample Survey Organisation will complete its exercise. The panel officials indicated that the government would like to wait for the latest figures before bringing in the food law.

In the interim, a revamp of the Public Distribution System is being planned. Only 40 per cent of the foodgrains under the system reach the beneficiaries.

CPM’s Politburo member Brinda Karat also said the food Bill will not become a law in near future. “The Bill will not be introduced in this session.” After its introduction, the Bill would be discussed in a parliamentary standing committee after which the government would have to re-introduce it, she told the Right To Food campaigners.

Karat, like her Left colleagues A.B. Bardhan and D. Raja of the CPI, termed the proposed Bill as a government bid to reduce Rs 55,000-crore food subsidy bill.

Montek, however, said Tendulkar report would push up the subsidy bill by 30 per cent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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