 "Food min assures states of sharing financial burden of food law")
The Centre might share financial burden of states in transporting an storing food grains to make the food law palatable to states.
Food Minister K. V Thomas today assured states of constituting a committee under the chairmanship of food secretary to look into the financial difficulties faced by states in implementing the Food Security Act.
The Act which was recently enacted to provide legal entitlement for cheap grains to 67% of Indian population. Officials said many states like Uttar Pradesh said that they will not implement the scheme as Centre is not sharing the entire burden of the law. Currently, states bear the entire cost of transportation and storage of foodgrains, which could now be shared by the Centre.
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"The normal cost of transportation of foodgrains, commission to ration shop owners is around Rs 10,000 crore, which till now is borne entirely by the states or passed on to consumers, but henceforth will be shared between Centre and states in a ratio decided by the committee constituted today," food secretary Sudhir Kumar who also attended the meeting said.
Thomas said that almost 50% states, have shown their willingness to implement the programme by December.