States asked to expedite remaining work on Socio Economic Caste Census

NEW DELHI: With various state governments set to roll out the food security programme, the Centre has asked chief ministers to expedite remaining work on Socio Economic Caste Census ( SECC 2011) which would help states to identify eligible beneficiaries.

In his letters to state chief ministers, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said the draft list from the SECC is to be ready at the earliest for putting up in the public domain and for being made available for claims and objections at gram panchayat level.

The Rural Development Ministry has asked the states to issue instructions to the officials concerned to speed up the process.

The Centre believes that the implementation of the food security is crucially linked to identification of households and it wants an expeditious completion of the survey.

The government started conducting SECC for the first time in the country on June 30, 2011. The exercise was carried out by the respective state/Union territory governments with the financial and technical support of the Centre.

The exercise, supposed to end by December 31, 2011, is expected to to completed by September.

Meanwhile, the activists of Right to Food Campaign have claimed that rural people are at the risk of being excluded from the food security system due to the Socio Economic and SECC-2011 in different states.

The Food Security legislation, once enacted, will give the nation's three-fourth population the right to get 5 kg of foodgrains every month at highly subsidised rates of Rs 1-3 per kg.

The beneficiaries can get rice at Rs 3 per kg while wheat and coarse cereals will be given at Rs 2 and Rs 1 per kg respectively under the programme.