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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Plan panel meet on Food Security Act today by Nitin Sethi & Mahendra Kumar Singh

Plan panel meet on Food Security Act today by Nitin Sethi & Mahendra Kumar Singh

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published Published on Apr 16, 2010   modified Modified on Apr 16, 2010


The argument within the government over how many people should benefit from the proposed National Food Security Act just got more convoluted.

The Planning Commission, in a meeting of its members on Saturday, will consider if the country can do with two sets of figures — a lower estimate of poor for the UPA's flagship food scheme and for allocating subsidy, and the Tendulkar committee number for other purposes.

The Commission has so far shown reluctance to accept even the moderate estimate of the Tendulkar committee, which pegs the number of people living below the poverty line in India at 37.2% of the population.

Sources said with a split in the Planning Commission, Saturday's meeting is set to see another proposal where the Tendulkar committee figures would be accepted in general but the number of beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act and the consequent burden on the exchequer of providing subsidized grains would get curtailed below the Tendulkar figures.

The sudden burst of activity in the Plan panel comes after Congress president Sonia Gandhi asked government to reconsider the draft of the Food Security Act that the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) headed by Pranab Mukherjee had finalized. The EGoM prodded by Congress leadership held a meeting to re-jig the bill but instead decided to lob the ball in the Planning Commission's court by asking it to first finalise the poverty figures.

The Plan panel members met once last week on the subject when sources said the issue remained unresolved with lack of unanimity on accepting the Tendulkar committee report and using its projections as the ceiling for the Food Security Act beneficiaries. The deputy chairman of the commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, met the expenditure and food secretaries on the same issue on Friday.

The extended debate within the Planning Commission is reflective of the differences between the party and the government over the scope of the bill with the latter having already once conveyed that the bill, as cleared by the EGoM, did not fulfil the brief the Congress manifesto provided while announcing the scheme in the run-up to the last general elections. While the manifesto had suggested special provisions for 'vulnerable' groups such as the urban homeless, the bill instead took away even the existing provisions of public distribution system for the poorest of poor under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana.

The attempt by the government to keep its 'legal' liability and fiscal burden to the minimal had attracted the ire of civil society groups and finally led Congress president to intervene in order to rescue what is seen as UPA's flagship scheme in its second tenure, from early criticism just as NREGA had faced.


The Times of India, 17 April, 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Plan-panel-meet-on-Food-Security-Act-today/articleshow/5823276.cms


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