Kerala and Tamil Nadu have also rolled out the National Food Security Act (NFSA). With this, now the Act has been implemented in all the States and Union Territories. As a result, now 81.34 crore persons will get wheat at Rs. 2/ kg and rice at Rs. 3/ kg. This was announced by Union Minister of Consumer Affair, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan while interacting with the media here today. Being an important initiative for ensuring food security of the people, the Government of India actively pursued with all the States/UTs for its early implementation.
Shri Paswan said now the Centre will focus on further reforms in PDS, which will include end to end computerisation of the system for which States/UTs are being technically and financially assisted. He said this is important for bringing in transparency in the functioning of the public distribution system (PDS), which is vital feature of NFSA, in order to check leakages and diversion of food grains.
Highlighting other initiatives taken by the Centre to make the PDS leakage proof, Shri Paswan said that the beneficiary’s data base has been digitized in all the 36 States/UTs, wherein, information is available right up to beneficiary level and is in the public domain. Online allocation of food grains in being done in 28 States/UTs, and the entire food grain supply chain has been computerised in 18 States/UTs. 100 percent linkage of Ration Cards with Addhar, which is 71% at the moment, will be achieved. Food grains losses of FCI have been brought down to 0.04 percent and major FCI depots have been made online.
