Food and Civil Supplies Minister C. Divakaran said here on Friday that Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy was misleading the people on the government's scheme for supply of rice at Rs.2 a kg to 60 lakh families.
In a statement here, the Minister said the government had provided sufficient funds in the budget for 2010-11 for distribution of rice at Rs. 2 a kg to all the beneficiaries.
Despite that, Mr. Chandy was asking how the government would find money to provide the subsidy for rice.
Mr. Divakaran noted that the present government had been able to raise resources totalling Rs.50,000 crore over the past five years to fund various development and welfare schemes.
On the other hand, the previous government had left its scheme for supply of rice at Rs.3 a kg without any budget provision. The scheme was operational only for a few weeks on the basis of oral orders and the ration dealers had complained that they had been cheated.
He added that it was the present government that cleared the arrears due to the ration dealers under the UDF government's scheme.
If Mr. Chandy was in favour of the present scheme, he should be withdrawing his complaint to the Election Commission. Or, if implementation of the extended scheme was in violation of the code of conduct for the elections, he should go on appeal before the Supreme Court to prove that.
(The High Court had struck down a directive of the Election Commission against implementing the order extending the scheme.)
