Scaling down Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s first administrative promise, the Cabinet has modified the ambitious Congress scheme of distributing 30 kg of rice at `1 per kg to below poverty line families.
A quota has been fixed for each family depending on the size, but it is a slab rather than the old unit scheme.
Citing a shortage of rice, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra said after Thursday’s Cabinet meeting: “This is a temporary measure till the rice availability is streamlined.’’
He said the government has fixed a quota of 10 kg rice for single-member families, 20 kg for two-member families and 30 kg for families of more than two members.
The new slab scheme will cost Rs 4,300 crore against the Rs 4,600 crore, if Siddaramaiah’s announcement had been followed to the letter. Still, this marks an almost three-fold increase in subsidy which was Rs 1,200 crore till now. Siddaramaiah had estimated and announced that additional costs to supply 30 kg to 98 lakh families was Rs 460 crore, against a real-time increase of Rs 3,100 crore. This subsidy, however, is less than the power subsidy given to farmers through free electricity to pumpsets. This was Rs 4,772 crore in 2012-13 and is projected to be Rs 5,381 crore in the current fiscal.
Citing shortage of availability of rice, the government has modified its Rs 1 per kg scheme. The government has done away with the old unit system of distributing food grains through public distribution system adopted by the BJP government.
Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra said the government requires 2.45 lakh metric tonnes of rice to be distributed among the BPL and Antyodaya card holders. While the Centre supplies around 1.44 lakh metric tonnes, Karnataka faces a shortage of around one lakh metric tonnes of rice. “To make up this gap, the government plans to buy rice from open market as well as from Odisha and Chhattisgarh and also from other government agencies.
Giving in to a demand from the people of North Karnataka, the government would try to distribute jowar, ragi and wheat to those people, he noted.
