Food Security Ordinance tabled in Lok Sabha

NEW DELHI:The UPA government has tabled the Food Security Ordinance in the Lok Sabha even as a House panel has recommended that figures on the poor provided by state governments should also be taken on board.

Since figures provided by the state governments are always larger than those determined by the central government, this could swell the cost of running the FSA from Rs 60,000 crore to well over Rs 1,00,000 crore.

The standing committee on finance, headed by former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, said on Wednesday the Planning Commission should work closely with all the concerned departments at the central and state levels on enumeration of the poor.

The committee recommended the setting up of a joint mechanism for the purpose and said that the Planning Commission should concern itself only with "providing an indicative criteria for determining the poor while leaving the estimation and enumeration of poverty to a joint mechanism to be taken up subsequently." It also recomended video recording of some processes of enumeration done in the gram sabhas.

The committee also took on the central planning body for a plethora of schemes and programmes. "There is no reason why there should be a scheme to touch every aspect of humans or livestocks," the panel said.