Ten more states to implement Food Security Act by April 1

The National Food Security Act (NFSA) will be implemented in 10 more states from April 1 this year, taking the total number of states implementing the Act to 21, Union Minister of Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan said on Monday.

“When I became the minister, only 11 states had implemented the NFSA and that too they had not implemented it totally...today we are happy to say that the number of states has increased from 11 to 21, including Gujarat, which will implement it by April 1, 2016,” Paswan said on the sidelines of a meeting with Food Corporation of India officials of Gujarat.

He said unlike earlier, the NFSA will be implemented by fulfilling conditions required in the Act such as digitisation, linkage of ration cards to Aadhaar cards, computerisation of supply chain, end-to-end computerisation and installation of ‘point of sale’ devices across fair price shops, among others.

The minister lauded the efforts of the Gujarat government in implementing the Act.

“A month ago we had received information that Gujarat will also implement the Act from April 1 as ration for the same has been allocated. In fact, Gujarat has done more than what is required in the Act in terms of computerisation of point of sale. Computer will say how many persons are there in a beneficiary’s family, how much grains are required to be allocated,” he said.

As many as 3,83,44,000 beneficiaries have been identified in Gujarat to whom 21 lakh tonne food grains will be distributed annually under the programme. Paswan said Gujarat has already prepared the allocation list for a possible rise in the number of beneficiaries, as the current calculation of beneficiaries is based on the 2011 census.