This would give relief to the country’s starving millions and also solve the government’s problem of preserving food grains after record procurement.
Seeking to kill two birds with one stone, the Supreme Court (SC) asked the Centre on Thursday to give away food grains rotting due to neglect among the poor at “low cost or no cost”.
This would give relief to the country’s starving millions and also solve the government’s problem of preserving food grains after record procurement.
SC asked the Centre to raise the quantity of food supply to below poverty line (BPL) population and keep fair price shops open all month.
The court came up with the solution after food secretary Alka Sirohi said in an affidavit that as a result of record procurement of wheat and rice in the past three years, central pool stocks had reached 604.28 lakh tonnes. But there was no space to stock the produce and 178 lakh tonnes of wheat were stored in covered and plinth (CAP), she said.
Taking note of the government’s predicament in handling record procurement, the court said a permanent solution lied in building adequate storage facilities.
It said the government may consider building at least one large Food Corporation of India (FCI) warehouse in every state and one in every division, if not every district, of all states.
During the inconclusive proceedings of a PIL filed by People’s Union for Civil Liberties nine years ago, justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma examined the government’s affidavit listing planned steps to ensure that the poor get fed and rampant racketeering in food distribution is prevented.
The solution to the problem, the court said, lied in computerisation of the network. The government agreed and said in its affidavit that “total computerisation” of the public distribution system was a priority.
Fixing August 31 to examine the government’s response, the judges suggested using information system for food grains management (IISFM), an application developed by National Informatics Centre for FCI. The system keeps track of food grains management in FCI.
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