Will Arun Jaitley Push Forward UPA's Flagship Food Security Act?

Ranchi: During its 10-year-long reign, the Congress-led UPA government focussed intensively on welfare schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and, more recently, the National Food Security Act.

With Finance Minister Arun Jaitley scheduled to present the BJP-led NDA government's first budget tomorrow, a question mark hangs over whether the focus of the new administration will remain on such initiatives.

Despite being rolled out last year, many states are yet to implement the Food Security Act. In various states, including Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, administrative incompetence coupled with corruption has meant that the scheme has had little impact on the ground level.

Activist Jean Dreze, who is involved in an initiative to ensure food security for children from 250 families in Jharkhand's Latehar district, says, "We want to say through agitations and initiatives that we are not going to wait any longer for the implementation of this Act".

The deadline to implement the Act was July 4; it has now been extended by three months by the centre because as many as 20 states are yet to implement it.

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As per the guidelines of the Act, beneficiary households will be entitled to five kilograms of food grain per person per month and another 35 kilograms per household per month under the Antyodaya scheme.

In the last budget, the UPA government allocated Rs 90,000 crore for the scheme. But in states like Jharkhand, many families don't even have basic items like ration cards that are needed to avail the benefits of the scheme.

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When the Food Security Act was passed last year, Narendra Modi, then the BJP's prime ministerial candidate, had criticised the UPA government and said that more needed to be done to strengthen such an Act.

"Your scheme is such that you have already decided who the beneficiaries of the Act will be. Now you are forcing the state governments to find people who meet the eligibility criteria," he had said.