Foodgrains to Disaster affected Areas

New Delhi: The National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) has been implemented in all States/UTs and operations of Public Distribution System (PDS) are now governed as per the provision of the Act. Within the limit of extending the coverage upto seventy five percent of rural population and upto fifty percent of urban population as per Section 3(2) of NFSA, the percentage coverage for each State has to be determined by the Central Government and the total number of persons to be covered in such rural and urban areas of the State shall be calculated on the basis of the population estimates as per the census of which the relevant figures have been published. Accordingly the Central Government makes allocation of foodgrains for each State/UT. However, there is no provision in the Act for giving priority to any particular area or region or activity under PDS.

As per extant norms, in case of natural calamities including droughts, additional allocation of foodgrains for meeting the requirement for upto three months can be made to the States/UTs on the basis of the request received from them. However, the demand for requirement beyond three months must be submitted with the recommendation of Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare. The allocation of foodgrains is made at Minimum Support Price (MSP)/MSP derived rates for wheat and rice respectively. No such request has been received so far in the current financial year from any State/UT.

This information was given in a written reply by the Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Danve Raosaheb Dadarao in the Lok Sabha yesterday.