Provide 5kg of foodgrain at cheap rates to 67% of population: Parliamentary Committee

NEW DELHI: A Parliamentary Committee today suggested monthly legal entitlement to 5 kg of foodgrains per person at highly subsidised rates to 67 per cent of country's population under the UPA government's ambitious Food Security Bill.

Submitting its report to Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar, the panel said, "The beneficiaries should get rice, wheat and coarse grains at Rs 3, 2 and 1 per kg, respectively."

"We have suggested that there should be single category of beneficiary with uniform entitlement of 5 kg per person per month," Chairman of the Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution Vilas Muttemwar told reporters here.

The House panel's suggestion is in contrast to provisions in government's Food Bill, which classify beneficiaries into two categories -- priority households and general households.

The Bill was introduced in Lok Sabha in December 2011. "The report was adopted unanimously with one dissent note from CPI (M) member T N Seema," he added.

The panel agreed to the Bill's provision to cover 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban people, Muttemwar said.

Under the Food Bill, a pet project of UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, the government has proposed that priority households should get 7 kg of rice and wheat per month per person at Rs 3 and Rs 2 per kg, respectively.

The general households would get at least 3 kg at 50 per cent of the minimum support (MSP) price.