Consideration for the poor has been the hallmark of the present GoI, for two consecutive years of the pandemic, food grains @ 5 kg per person were provided free of cost to the public under Prime Minister Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana. Centre spent nearly 1.2 lakh crore under PMGKAY and around 1.5 lakh under NFSA. The COVID-19 flagship food program PMGKAY has been discontinued from 1st January 2023 but keeping the situation in view and reaching out to the poor, food under NFSA will be free of cost, entire 100 per cent. The earlier subsidised cost of Rs 3/ for rice, Rs 2/- for wheat and an additional Re 1/- per kg for flour instead of wheat were charged from the public but from now onwards everything is free except the Re 1/-kg charge. Expenditure on NFSA this year will be around 2 lakh crore benefiting approximately eighty-three crore people, the highest subsidised food program carried out in the world, a record of its kind. The earlier state Governments used to further subsidise the Rs 3/per kg rice and Rs 2/ per kg wheat and used to claim for providing free ration, but no more, GoI has taken even that undue credit from them. Our own LG Administration has proactively passed on the necessary instructions to the NIC, PDS dealers and authorities to do the necessary changes in the software and allied hardware to avoid flimsy end-moment excuses. The public has been made aware that everything is for free, nothing extra has to be given at PDS so advised to take a proper receipt to avoid any ambiguity in the end. The constrain on subsidies in the central budget are preordained as salaries, pensions, debt services, defence, internal security, subsidies and political obligations accounting for nearly 75 percent of the budget, with only 25 per cent left for manoeuvrability, narrow window indeed but the government has clear cut policy, it is the Government of the people, for the people, no compromise on this.
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