Rs 1,000/month for pregnant women?
The draft food bill proposes a payment of Rs 1,000 each month for six months to pregnant and lactating women, which is already being executed in 52 districts across the nation currently, while children from the age of three months till they complete Class 8 will get nutritional food.
The ministry of women and child development has suggested breakfast for children, which has also been included in the Cabinet note, sources said. The food bill also proposes to make women as head of the family as far as food entitlement is concerned, which has been opposed by states like Mizoram and Puducherry.
The Cabinet note also seeks to cover old age persons and destitute in separate category for food entitlement, added the sources.
Another proposal regarding community kitchen has also been included in the Cabinet note, which seeks to address the issue of hunger, said the sources.
It has also been proposed in the Cabinet note that the running of the PDS and its social audit be included in the ambit of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), said the sources.
Food Bill in Cabinet on Tuesday
The Union Cabinet, at its meeting here on Tuesday, will take up the National Food Security Bill, which seeks to make food entitlement a legal right for 75 per cent of the population in rural areas and 50 per cent in urban centres.
The Food Bill seeks an investment of Rs 1.10 lakh crores in agriculture to make it sustainable, the food subsidy is expected to swell from the current Rs 66,000 crores to Rs 95,000 crores once the law is implemented.
The Food Bill, drafted largely on the recommendations of the Sonia Gandhi-led NAC, seeks to cover 46 per cent of people in rural areas and 28 per cent in urban areas in the priority group — in which a person will get 7 kg of food grains each month. Those in a wider group will get 3 kg of foodgrains per month.
People in the priority group will get rice at Rs 3/kg, wheat at Rs 2/ kg and millets at Rs 1/kg, while those in the general group would have to pay 50 per cent of the minimum support price.
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