No ordinance on Food Security Bill

NEW DELHI: The Cabinet on Thursday kept away from its plan to promulgate an Ordinance for rolling out the vote-catcher food security programme, following pressure from within and outside the ruling alliance.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the meeting that the government should make another attempt to bring the Opposition on board for passing the legislation in Parliament, a person familiar with the matter told ET. The decision to shun the Ordinance was prompted by resistance from Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar and the Samajwadi Party, which lends outside support to the Congressled coalition, said the person, who did not wish to be named.

While Pawar has been maintaining that the bill should be debated by Parliament as it involves state governments and a huge subsidy burden, the Samajwadi Party has said the provisions of the bill will distort the agriculture sector and hurt the interests of farmers. The prime minister held consultations with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, on whose insistence the government had prepared the Ordinance, and her political advisor Ahmed Patel before the meeting, the person said.

“The Food Security Bill is ready. We would like to pass it as a bill but the Ordinance version of the bill is also ready. We decided on Thursday that we would like to make one more effort to ask the Opposition parties whether they will cooperate in passing the bill in a special session of Parliament,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram told the media after the meeting.

He also said Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath and Food Minister KV Thomas would seek support of the Opposition parties for passing the bill. The possibility of a special session, however, appears dim as non-Congress parties said the issue could wait till the monsoon session. “The BJP wants the bill to be passed but with certain amendments. This can be taken up in the monsoon session,” said BJP president Rajnath Singh.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi taunted the Congress for the last-minute rush to pass the bill. “After 10 years, the government in Delhi has thought about the poor, we doubt their intentions,” Modi wrote on the micro blogging site Twitter. He also reminded the Congress that food security schemes had been functioning in various states. “For the last 10 years in Gujarat, the poor are getting wheat at Rs 2 per kg and rice at Rs 3 per kg through the public distribution system. Is this not food security?” Modi asked.

The food guarantee bill aims at providing subsidised foodgrain to nearly 67% of the country’s 1.2 billion people at an initial cost of about Rs 1.3 lakh crore.