Mani Shanker Aiyar demands greater role for panchayats in food bill

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Mani Shanker Aiyar on Monday said the food security bill ignores the role of panchayats in Public Distribution System ( PDS) and demanded a greater role for local bodies in the legislation.

Participating in the debate on the Bill in Rajya Sabha, he said while he was supporting the legislation, he felt Panchayati Raj institions should get a greater role.

Aiyar said PDS has been successful only in states where local bodies are prominently involved. He said he had written to Food Minister K V Thomas and had met him on the issue but despite his assurances, the local bodies are not given prominence in the bill.

Regretting that "not one comma has been changed" despite his efforts, Aiyar asked Thomas to utilise the opportunity, when the bill was being discussed, to consider provisions which will recognise the role of panchayats and municipalities.

He said civil supplies departments have become "dens of corruption" and involving panchayats is the solution.

He said "continued dependence on bureaucracy" could not give an answer and added he was saying it as a former bureaucrat himself.

Aiyar said leaving implementation of PDS under food security to bureaucrats is not desirable.

"However gargantuan the task of procuring, storing, transporting, delivering, if at the last mile there is a bureaucrat responsible and not an elected representative - there is no hope at all," he said.

The views of the Congress leader were welcomed a number of times with the thumping of desks by opposition members.