Participating in the second meeting of the Chief Ministers' Working Group on Food and Public Distribution here, Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh on Wednesday asked the Centre to make the public distribution system (PDS) universal in the Left-Wing Extremism-affected districts, as well as, all Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste families living in tribal areas to do away with “errors of exclusion.” Mr. Singh is a member of the working group, set...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was right when he maintained in his meeting with the media that the judiciary should not stray into the realm of policy formulation for food management. But the same plea cannot apply to the media which brought the issue of rotting of foodgrain to public attention and virtually put the government in the dock for criminal wastage of grains in its warehouses. Policy deficiencies are clearly...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday virtually ticked off the Supreme Court, saying that it "should not get into policy formation". The trigger for this rebuke was the apex court's anger at grains rotting in FCI and government godowns, and its direction to agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to distribute grains for free to families living below the poverty line. Talking to a group of editors on Monday morning, Singh said...

Even as the prime minister protests his inability to distribute food free of cost to the poor, the overflowing food stocks seem set to lead to another year of blockbuster expenditure on the public distribution system. According to numbers from the department of food and public distribution system (PDS), the government spent Rs25,600 crore on food subsidies during just the first four months of the year. The amount — higher than the...

Altogether 19 of the 44 accused in the multi-crore public distribution system (PDS) scam in Arunachal Pradesh have been arrested so far, head of the Special Investigating Cell (SIC) investigating the scam M S Chauhan said here today. Altogether 19 accused including former chief minister Gegong Apang have been arrested but 18 of them have been granted bail by the Yupia fast track court while the bail plea of Apang...