New Delhi: A year after the Narendra Modi government stopped supply of rice to the Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka government for its flagship Anna Bhagya scheme, citing poor monsoon, high prices and possible shortage of Kharif crop, the Congress alleged that the decision was a “vendetta-driven decision”, as a recently released report revealed that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has been storing three times the required buffer of rice all this while.
On July 4, the Hindustan Times reported that the Centre will resume its sale of rice to states as it was increasingly getting financially unfeasible to stock any more rice with the FCI – Centre’s primary grain handling unit. The move to resume its sale in the open market and to states has been necessitated by “constraints of storage space” and “high costs of maintaining surplus reserves”, the daily said, apart from inflating the food subsidy bill by nearly “Rs 16000-18000 crore” when the Modi government will present its full budget in end July. As a result, the food ministry has recommended the “liquidation of excess stocks” to an inter-ministerial committee to monitor inflation and food management, which is steered by Union home minister Amit Shah.
The report further claimed that the FCI’s full stock has reached to about 50 million tonnes of rice, more than three times the mandatory buffer requirement of 13.54 million tonnes. The FCI is also expecting to receive another 17 million tonnes from millers, pressing it further to open up storage space.
The Centre’s move last year to stop the sale of rice to states had led to protests by some southern states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. The newly-elected Congress government in Karnataka in particular had protested massively, alleging that the Centre’s move was a vindictive decision to prevent the Siddaramaiah government from implementing one of its flagship election guarantees that aimed at providing an additional 5 kilograms of rice to people apart from the Centre’s free ration scheme.
On Friday, the Congress’s chief spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said, “With the Modi Government refusing to sell the state adequate rice to implement the scheme, it was only the Karnataka Government’s determination and proactiveness that allowed it to continue the scheme, through a cash transfer of Rs 170 per month for each eligible beneficiary to defray expenses for purchasing 5kg of rice.”
He added that the reasons cited by the Centre to stop the sale of rice were “blatantly false”, as has been revealed by the FCI’s current stocks.
Ramesh said that now that the budget is looming, the Modi government has “finally woken up to the huge cost imposed by the non-biological Prime Minister’s vendetta politics”. He also demanded an apology from the Prime Minister for depriving Karnataka’s people of their due provisions all this while.
“Will the 17 BJP MPs and the 2 JD(S) MPs elected from Karnataka, and the Cabinet Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution – also from Karnataka – seek fair compensation from the Government of India for the injustice done to the poorest of poor in Karnataka,” he asked.
