Food bill re-draft: Subsidies for 75 per cent

New Delhi: The National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi wants subsided food for 75 per cent of Indians - that's nearly 800 million people.

A working group of the Council will redraft the bill that was earlier prepared by the food ministry under Sharad Pawar.

The Council also wants to do away with the Below Poverty Line (BPL) criteria for allotting cheaper foodgrains, which was a key proposal in the earlier food bill drafted by Sharad Pawar's ministry.

The Council has suggested two broad categories - priority and general, under the proposed food security law.

The panel has recommended that:

• Priority households should get 35 kg of subsidised food every month. That's rice at Rs 3 per kilogram, wheat at Rs 2 per kilogram and millet at Rs 1 per kilogram.

• The other households should get 20 kilograms of foodgrains at a price not exceeding 50 per cent of the minimum support price for rice, wheat and millets.

"We are obviating the need to look at the BPL data. Starting from the top we have decided to knock off 15 per cent of the most affluent section from the rural areas and 60 per cent from the urban areas and including the rest under the food security net," said Narendra Jadhav, member of the National Advisory Council.

The panel wants the first phase of food security law implemented from the beginning of the next financial year, and wants the entire country covered by 2014. If that happens, it will cost the government over Rs 23,000 crore more. Now the government's annual food subsidy bill stands at over Rs 56,000 crore.

However, Jean Dreze, one of the members of the NAC, has disagreed with the final proposals. He says the NAC began its deliberations on a visionary note, but later came under a lot of pressure to accommodate constraints imposed by the government and the final result is a minimalist proposal.
Jean Dreze's Disagreement Note

Although the Food Security Bill is in the pipeline, the government's own internal differences have held it back. Now UPA II will want it to be a signature legislation just as NREGA was in UPA I.