Previous Government had reservations in introducing in the State the Food Security Act passed by the Parliament. The Chief Minister made an announcement in a press conference that the Act will be implemented from February 1, 2016. The Act will be implemented in toto, and there will be no need of carrying it through the circuitous road of legislation. The decision will provide ration at very low rates to nearly 74.13 lakh people of the State. The Minister for CAPD released a document at the press conference which detailed the benefits and usefulness of introducing the Act in the State.
The document details that at present, the PDS covers only 99 lakh people i.e. 18.02 lakh families but after the implementation of NFSA, 119.13 lakh people or 22.73 lakh families will be covered. The Act shall provide food right at the doorsteps of consumer in a hassle free manner. Any person who is denied ration shall be given food security allowance and for this, an in-built grievance redressing mechanism has been incorporated in the Act at State, district and block level. With implementation of NFSA from February 1, 2016, 74.13 lakh people will get flour at the rate of Rs 2 per kg and rice at Rs 3 per kg while other 45 lakh people will get flour at Rs 8 per kg and rice at Rs 10 per kg. This will cover 95 per cent population of the State. There shall be uniformity of scale… 5 kg (of wheat and rice) to each person among all categories throughout the State accept the rationees under AAY category irrespective of the number of family members. Other benefits of the scheme are also taken into account while deciding to implement the Act. These, for example, are De-duplication shall eradicate bogus ration cards, Supply Chain Management system shall map entire movement of food grains from FCI to the customer, and electronic weighing scale and PoS (point of sale) at the automated PDS shops shall automatically update ration deduction.
The long term benefits accruing to the State are that this Act shall usher in an era of assured supply of highly subsidized ration to the citizens of J&K at their doorsteps in a transparent manner by hosting data of beneficiaries on the State web portal accessible to one and all. Alongwith it, the Cabinet also took into consideration the matter of monitoring the implementation of the new scheme.
Meanwhile, the Cabinet also took into consideration of monitoring the success of the implementation of the scheme and therefore approved the recommendations of the Sub Committee with regard to framing of Committees for monitoring of the implementation of NFSA. This is for the first time that drastic reforms have been announced in the public distribution system of rations in the State. People will welcome it and thus a host of problems connected with the supply of rations particularly to the people in remote areas of the state will be solved.
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