The Government of Telangana on Thursday informed the Assembly that it will Telangana food security cards verification to close on April 20 and go for distribution of permanent cards to citizens after that.
Finance and Civil Supplies Minister Etala Rajender told the House during question hour that 1.01 crore families had so far applied for cards ever since the new public distribution system of supplying Re 1 a kg rice at 6 kgs per head came into force in the State from January 1.
Except Hyderabad, the applications were received from all other districts. The government had distributed food security cards to 89.21 lakh families which entailed distribution of 13 lakh metric tonnes of rice per annum. However, the government was geared up to distribute up to 22 lakh MTs of rice per annum.
Mr. Rajender also said the 89.21 lakh cards included 80.01 lakh families that held white ration cards in the previous government that spent Rs 1,000 crore annually on subsidised rice. However, the annual burden on the present government was expected to be Rs. 2,681 crore.
The Minister also said the State government went ahead with implementing the Re 1 a kg rice though the Centre offered to support the scheme under the National Food Security Act only if 5 kgs of rice was supplied to one crore families at Rs 3 a kg. However, the State government stuck to its promise to supply 6 kgs of rice per head .
Telangana government also supplied fine rice to ninth and tenth class students of 34,000 schools and 3,000 hostels though they were not covered under the mid-day meal programme.
Source: The Hindu
