Anna Bhagya: Free rice, instead of cash, likely from next mt
BENGALURU: Come September, the state government is likely to provide 5kg of rice for free, instead of cash, to each member in families that are below the poverty line, as originally promised under the Anna Bhagya scheme.
The government’s failure to procure additional quantities of the foodgrain had forced it to pay Rs 170 in cash to each member of BPL families, instead of 5kg of free rice. Now, with the governments of Telangana and Andra Pradesh having offered to supply rice to Karnataka, the state government is all set to discontinue the cash payments and provide free rice instead.
Confirming this, food and civil supplies minister KH Muniyappa said on Friday if everything goes according to the plan, the state will distribute 5kg rice, instead of cash, to each member of BPL families under its Anna Bhagya scheme, starting next month.
This 5 kg is in addition to the 5 kg of free rice that the centre allocates under the National Food Security Scheme. Speaking to reporters here, Muniyappa said price negotiation is still on with Telangana and Andra Pradesh governments.
“We want them to supply rice at Rs 34 per kg, the price at which we would have purchased rice from Food Corporation of India. Talks are on and we may get a clearer picture in a week’s time,” Muniyappa said.
After Anna Bhagya 2.0 was rolled out last month, the minister said a total of Rs 556 crore has been transferred to 1.28 crore beneficiaries through direct benefit transfer (DBT).
Saying that 28 lakh BPL beneficiaries had not received cash under DBT since they either didn’t have bank accounts or their accounts were not linked to their BPL cards, the minister assured that the government was adopting adequate measures to address this issue.
Muniyappa said the state government was also considering distribution of jowar and ragi to BPL card holders. “We are procuring eight lakh tonnes of ragi and three lakh tones of jowar this year for this purpose,” he added.
On issuing new BPL cards, the minister said the food and civil supplies department had received about 2.95 lakh applications and steps would be taken soon to issue these cards after checking the authenticity of these applications.
“Issuance of new cards and making changes to existing ones had stopped [temporarily] due to the [assembly] elections, but both the processes will be resumed soon,” he added.
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