Cabinet defers Food Bill Ordinance

During the cabinet meeting, a final consensus could not be reached on bringing an ordinance to implement the United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s pet scheme. Instead, a decision was taken to court opposition parties for passage of the bill in a special Parliament session.

Home minister and leader of the Lok Sabha Sushil Kumar Shinde, parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath and food minister K V Thomas will meet opposition leaders to elicit their support for passage of the key legislation, finance minister P Chidambaram said after the cabinet meeting.

‘The Food Security Bill is ready. We would like to pass it as a bill but ordinance version of the bill is also ready. We decided today we would like to make one more effort to ask the opposition parties whether they will cooperate in passing the bill in a special session of Parliament,’ said Chidambaram. Thomas said the ordinance route has not been completely shelved and remains an option available to the government.

The BJP said it looked forward to a discussion on the bill. ‘It is good that the government has deferred the ordinance on food security. We want a detailed discussion in Parliament,’ said BJP president Rajnath Singh. The BJP, however, was not too optimistic about the government’s suggestion of calling a special session and said that it is not averse to advancing the monsoon session which normally begins in the last week of July. The BJP also made it clear that it would like to move amendments in the Food Security Bill, when it is tabled in Parliament as there are some shortcomings in the draft bill.

The BJP criticised Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s remarks that the government will reach out to the Opposition ‘one more time’ for support to the bill with the party charging that the UPA dispensation wants to get is passed for electoral gains. ‘If I got his words right I think he said government will approach the Opposition just one more time. He has said this just as a school teacher asks her students to cooperate,’ said BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman. Sitharaman said the BJP is happy that the government has given up the ordinance route.

The bill was tabled in the budget session but could not be taken up for discussion due to pandemonium in the Lok Sabha over various scams. The bill aims to give legal rights to 67 per cent of the population over a uniform quantity of 5 kg food grains at a fixed price of Rs 1-3 per kg through ration shops.