BENGALURU: With Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal on Friday categorically denying to supply rice to Karnataka through the Food Corporation of India (FCI), Food and Civil Supplies Minister K H Muniyappa found a way out to procure the 2.28 lakh metric tonnes of rice to launch the state government’s flagship Anna Bhagya programme.
“India is big and we have many avenues to procure rice. We will resolve the issue in a week’s time,” he said, indicating the options of procuring rice from other states. But he categorically declined that the state will purchase rice from the open market as it will be expensive and a burden on the state’s exchequer.
According to him, central agencies will call for tenders and procure rice from traders and channelise it to the government.
Sources told The New Indian Express that some traders, who had stock of rice in Karnataka, were also eager to supply. If all goes well, the government will likely launch the scheme by August 1.
The agencies the state government had already approached include the National Co-operative Consumers Federation (NCCF), National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) and Kendriya Bhandar.
Muniyappa, who returned to Bengaluru from New Delhi after pursuing the issue for a couple of days, on Thursday after failing to get appointment of Goyal on Friday headed back to the national capital as he got a call. “After half an hour of discussion, Goyal said it is not possible to supply rice to the state. I asked why this can’t it be as the entire country needs 135 lakh metric tonnes for PDS and there was almost double the stock of 262 lakh metric tonnes with FCI. But he maintained that the Centre needs more rice and up to 400 lakh metric tonnes against the commitments to different schemes. It was an evasive answer that I found not proper,” Muniyappa told to reporters.
He accused the Centre of playing “vendetta politics” over the issue despite the state being ready to procure rice at the FCI rate. He said he felt let down by the Centre as he had met Goyal with optimism.
On the Centre distributing 5-kg rice free of cost to every member BPL family and Antyodaya Anna Yojna(AAY) card holders, he attributed it to the Food Security Act brought by the Manmohan Singh-led Congress government in 2013.