Minister for Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection Punnulal Mohle on Monday said that Chhattisgarh’s Food Security law provides ‘Right to Food’ to around 90 per cent of the State’s population.
‘The Food Security law in the State is not just a piece of document. It had been been realized after intense discussion on the floor of the House both by the ruling party members and the Opposition,’ he said.
Mohle said that Chhattisgarh’s Food Security law had been appreciated even by the Vice Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
He said that even before the Food Security law was being drafted in Chhattisgarh, the Chief Minister Food Assistance Scheme was already under implementation in the State.
Mohle said that the scheme had been providing 34 lakh Antodaya families and ration card holders among the poor with food grains at Rs 1 and 2 per kg with the monthly quota of 35 kgs besides 2 kgs of salt free of cost.
The State government had also provided nutritional security in the Food Security law with a provision to offer ‘Chana’ (Gram) and ‘Dal”
to the beneficiaries, the
Minister said.
He said that the Food Security law has the provision of providing Mid day meal to the children in the age
bracket of 6 to 14 years during the school hours.This apart, the students residing in the hostels and the Ashram schools are provided food items at Government rates.
Chhattisgarh’s Food Security law had also provisioned to provide free food two times in a day for six months in the condition of starvation being faced by a family or an entire community and the period can be extended for another three months if there is no improvement after the relief is provided to the affected families, Mohle said.
Compared to this, the Centre’s Food Security Ordinance 2013 makes no provision for providing food security to the affected in case
of natural calamities, the
Minister said.
It is clear from the steps taken by the State Government that the implementation of the Food Security law since last six months in the State would resulted in ration card distribution to 90 per cent of the families to be completed this month with the commencement of the distribution of ration from next month (Sepetmber 2013), he said.