Food Security Bill not discussed at UPA meet after Mulayam's criticism

The Congress has said that it wants to urgently introduce the ambitious reform, which has been championed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. It promises wheat and rice at a fraction of the cost to some 810 million people, expanding current handouts to roughly 318 million of India's poorest.

But Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party, a key ally of the government, today described the proposal as "anti-farmer" and said the government's keenness to clear the populist reform suggests that it wants to call mid-term elections.

That opposition by an important partner may have forced the government to postpone a decision, said sources.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath said the government is planning to call all major parties to a meeting soon to get consensus on a special parliamentary session for the bill, which will raise the annual food subsidy spending by 45 per cent.

The main Opposition party, the BJP, has said that it is open to a special session of Parliament to debate the government's proposal to entitle two-thirds of India's population to cheap food. "The ordinance route for such an important legislation is not desirable. We are not opposed to a special session of Parliament," Opposition leader in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj tweeted. But she added, "The better option will be to pre-pone the Monsoon Session which is anyway due in July".

But the government is worried that the BJP, which disrupted the last session of Parliament with daily attacks on the government for alleged corruption, will block the Monsoon Session as well.

If an agreement on a special sitting of Parliament is not reached, sources say the government will use the emergency route of an ordinance to push through what it hopes will be a major vote-getter in the next national election in 2014. The ordinance will have to be approved within six weeks of Parliament's return. Critics say the food bill is little more than an attempt to help Congress, reeling from corruption scandals, win a third successive term. Parties like the Trinamool Congress have dismissed the proposal as "an election gimmick."

Left leader Brinda Karat said today that "6 crore tonnes of food grains have been rotting in go-downs but this government has not moved an inch." She said her party wants a discussion on the proposal in the monsoon session, and that the CPI(M) will ask for important amendments.

The government has already budgeted 900 billion or Rs. 90,000 crore for the scheme in the current fiscal year ending March 2014.

If the bill is passed, it will need to come up with as much as 1.3 trillion or Rs. 1.3 lakh crore in 2014, adding to a total subsidy burden that already eats up about 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product.