The National Advisory Council (NAC) will meet here on Friday to discuss the working group's draft of the National Food Security Bill.
The draft suggests the setting up of an autonomous body for grievance redress and enforcement of penalties. The authority could function along the lines of the national and State-level commissions set up under the Right to Information Act.
The draft Bill defines the penalties for violations of the Act, and what/who would be the enforcing agency. Violations would include, for instance, a closed ration shop, denial of ration card or supplies, improper implementation of mid-day meal, the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and other schemes, and instances of starvation and hunger.
Even as the Right to Food Campaign activists wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, seeking a universal Public Distribution System, well-placed sources said: “The issue of food entitlements has been settled as far as the NAC is concerned.”
Broadly, the draft Bill lays out PDS entitlements as approved by the council. It spells out the “non-PDS” entitlements — for vulnerable groups, mid-day meals, ICDS, community kitchens and destitute feeding. A significant component is the reforms made in the PDS for better delivery and implementation.
The NAC, chaired by Sonia Gandhi, decided last month that the new law should provide a legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrains for at least 75 per cent of the population, which includes 90 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban populations. Those in the 75 per cent category are divided into “priority households,” who should have a monthly entitlement of 35 kg of subsidised foodgrains (wheat, rice, millets) and “general households,” who should have a monthly entitlement of 20 kg at rates not exceeding 50 per cent of the current minimum support price of wheat, rice and millets.
On Thursday, the council's working group, convened by member Harsh Mander, met to give finishing touches to the various provisions of the draft Bill. However, activists of the Right to Food Campaign, who staged a demonstration in front of the Agriculture and Food Ministry here, “rejected” the NAC proposals saying they did not talk about universalisation of PDS, agricultural reforms, decentralised production, procurement and distribution, or malnutrition.
