Informist, Thursday, Jun 1, 2023
By Arunima Bharadwaj and Priyansh Verma
NEW DELHI – The government will review its decision to reduce wheat allocation under the National Food Security Act in some states and replace it with rice once the current procurement season ends, a senior official from the Department of Food and Public Distribution said.
"We will review whether we will restore the original quantity of wheat under the National Food Security Act after the procurement gets over in all states," the official told Informist.
Last year, the government had cut allocation of wheat to 10 states under the National Food Security Act due to lower procurement of wheat and a sharp fall in wheat stocks.
The government had also substituted wheat with rice in the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, the free food plan, when the country was hit by COVID-19. The government later merged the free food scheme with the National Food Security Act to provide food grains to poor.
Wheat stocks in the central pool had fallen to a three-year low of 18.99 mln tn as on Apr 1, 2022.
"Some states do not want rice to get substituted with wheat again (under the National Food Security Act). For example, Odisha wants rice and doesn't want to go back to wheat. Some states, on the other hand, want more wheat," the official said. "The government will take a call within a month or so after reviewing everything."
The government has so far procured 26.2 mln tn of wheat in the ongoing 2023-24 rabi marketing season against an estimated target of 34.2 mln tn. Last year, the government had procured 18.8 mln tn wheat.
"This year's production is more than last year's. We have sufficient quantity of wheat to distribute under PDS (public distribution system)," the official said.
As of May 1, the Centre's wheat stocks with the Food Corp of India were 29.03 mln tn, lower on year but sharply up from 8.35 mln tn on Apr 1.
The agriculture ministry has estimated the wheat production in the current corp year at a record 112.7 mln tn, up 4.6% from last year. End
Edited by Maheswaran Parameswaran
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