Siddaramaiah takes rice politics route for Karnataka local polls

BENGALURU: Rice politics is being deployed in full force in Karnataka, as the Congress fights for the grassroots against a determined BJP in the upcoming two-phase gram panchayat polls, technically apolitical, for 94,458 seats across 5,844 local bodies on May 29 and June 2.

After the Modi-wave that swept the Lok Sabha polls and netted the BJP 17 of the state's 28 Parliament seats, the Congress needs to show its strength at the gram panchayat polls, which is being seen as test of chief minister Siddaramaiah's popularity . So, in line with the tried and tested formula in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the CM's favourite scheme -Anna Bhagya -has been rejigged to give five kg of free rice to each poor person, instead of 10 kg.

Moving more swiftly than normal, the government has also quickly rebranded the scheme as the route to `hunger-free and malnutrition-free Karnataka,' and rolled it out on May 1, just four days ahead of the formal announcement of panchayat polls by the state election commission.

While the distribution of free rice -a first for Karnataka -has already begun in every district, another aspect of the scheme, to give rice and wheat to the above poverty line population, at ` . 15 and ` . 10 a kg, will roll out from June 1, effectively covering almost all residents of the state under the scheme.

The revamped scheme has taken pointers from existing schemes in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh, all of which have yielded enormous political benefits to those who introduced them.

Congress spokesperson and the scheme's pointsman, minister of state for food, civil supplies and consumer affairs Dinesh Gundu Rao said the free rice would be given to 1.08 crore families, which is a whopping 81% of Karnataka's 1.33 crore households identified in the 2011 census. “The subsidy amount for the scheme will be ` . 2,400 crore, which is about ` . 600 crore less than what we spent on the Anna Bhagya scheme last year,“ he said.

The state has managed to achieve this meaner look for the scheme by reducing the number of kgs of foodgrains given to each cardholder and by weeding out about 8.5 lakh bogus BPL cards. The new scheme will give five kgs of food grains -either rice, or a combination of rice, ragi and wheat, as per the choice of the beneficiary -besides 1 kg palmo . 25, 1 kg sugar at ` lein oil at ` . 13.50 and 1 packet iodised salt at ` . 2, to each person covered under the below-poverty line card.

“There are no issues as the code of conduct for the gram panchayat polls comes into play only from May 10. Besides, it is not a new scheme, we have just reworked the existing scheme in an effort to make it more effective and remove the problem of malnutrition also, besides hunger,“ Rao added.