NFSA: State Govt to fall short of March target
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, February 02 2014:
With the process of identifying the priority households and selection of beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) not completed till date, the State Government is most likely to miss its target of implementing the NFSA from March next month.
The NFSA guarantees Right to Food to 2/3rd of the population through subsidized food grains.
Each entitled person would receive 5 kg of food grains per month (rice at Rs 3, wheat at Rs 2 or coarse grains at Re 1).The NFSA has already been implemented in Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
According to a highly placed source, the CAF & PD, on December 20, 2013, issued an official order directing all officials concerned at the district and sub-division levels to complete the process of identifying the priority households and selection of beneficiaries under the NFSA by January last month.
However, the process is still underway and a long official procedure is ahead in order to get the final list of beneficiaries approved by the Union Ministry.
The identification of priority households and selection of beneficiaries are being monitored by district level monitoring committees in every district.
The committee is headed by the senior most Minister or MLA of each district.
The Deputy Commissioners and other officials of District Administration are also part of the monitoring committees.
Moreover, sub-committees of the district level monitoring committees have also been formed with the elected members of both urban and rural local self-government bodies.
It may be noted that the National Food Security Act cannot be implemented in the State unless the priority households and beneficiaries are finalized.
The Centre would fix the State's quota of food grains based on the final list of the priority households and beneficiaries submitted by the State to the Union Ministry.
Recently, a meeting of all DCs and other district officials was convened in the chair of CAF&PD Commissioner Y Thamkishore to discuss the progress in the works of identifying the priority households and selection of beneficiaries under the NFSA.
The district officials have been asked to expedite the identification and selection process and submit the final list to the CAF&PD at the earliest.
The source further revealed that the State Government's target for implementing the NFSA from March next month would not be possible despite of all efforts.
The people of the State have to wait for some more time to get the benefits of NFSA.
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