Announces setting up of three committees - agricultural production, consumer affairs and food and public distribution.
Highlighting the need for bringing back agriculture to the centre of the government agenda, the Centre has announced setting up of three committees — in charge of agricultural production, consumer affairs, food and public distribution — to enhance productivity and strengthen the public distribution system.
The committees will submit their reports within two months, recommending effective measures to beef up the system. The decision was taken in a meeting of the core group of central ministers and state chief ministers, headed by prime minister Manmohan Singh.
Briefing the media after the meeting, agriculture and food minister Sharad Pawar said the working group on agriculture production, headed by Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, will also comprise chief ministers of Punjab, West Bengal and Bihar.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will head the working group on consumer affairs. It will have Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh chief ministers as members.
The third working group on food and public distribution will be headed by Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and include the chief ministers of Chhattisgarh, Assam and the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, C Rangarajan, as members.
The core group was constituted on March 15, comprising chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The other members of the committee are finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and Montek Singh Ahluwalia.
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The members deliberated on identifying the number of below poverty line (BPL) families, following differences in the central and state government records. While Planning Commission figures showed 65 million BPL families, the state records show more than 100 million.
West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee asked the Centre to bring more clarity in the BPL list, as various government appointed committees have shown, in the recent past, that there is an increase in the number of poor people. Citing the N C Saxena committee and the Vijay Kelkar committee reports, Bhattacharjee and Modi asked the Centre to revise the BPL list.
The centre is all set to start a fresh BPL census and ther food security bill will soon be unveiled.
Bhattacharjee and Modi also demanded that the proposed food security bill should cater to the Above Poverty Line (APL) families too, and give at least 35 kg of foodgrain to both APL and BPL population. State governments asked the Centre to provide infrastructure for food storage facilities like warehouses and cold storages.