Central move jeopardises Siddaramaiah’s grains scheme

Even though an election slugfest between the Congress and BJP is over in Karnataka, but a power tussle is still on over the implementation of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s ambitious project ‘Anna Bhagya’. Under this scheme, 10 kg of food grains will be given to every member of a Below Poverty Line (BPL) household and Antyodaya card holders from July 1. However, its execution seems to be in crisis now as the Congress-led state government has alleged that the Centre has stopped the Food Corporation of India from selling wheat and rice to states.

Calling it a “political decision”, Siddaramaiah has alleged that the Central government ordered FCI to stop selling wheat and rice to state governments under the Open Market Sales Scheme Domestic (OMSSD). He has accused the BJP of changing the policy to scuttle the implementation of ‘Anna Bhagya’ scheme.

The Karnataka government assessed that it will needs 2.28 Lakh metric tonnes food grain every month to give 5 kg additional rice under the scheme with rest of 5 kg being provided to the state under the food security act by the Union government. After negotiations between the state government and officials of the FCI, the corporation agreed to provide rice at Rs 36.60 per kg including the transport cost. This would cost the state government Rs 840 crore per month and Rs 10,092 crore per year.

The cabinet had cleared the proposal last week and the FCI in a letter dated July 12 confirmed providing the rice later in the month.

“On June 13, the Ministry of Consumer affairs ordered that sale of wheat and rice under OMSSD for state government is discontinued. However, it’s continued for northeast. Going by their promise of the FCI, we had decided to launch it on July 1. On June 12, they agreed to provide and on June 13 they backtracked. The Union government has taken a political decision fearing that this scheme will bring good name to the Congress government in Karnataka,” Siddaramaiah said.

To arrange the required stock to launch the scheme on July 1, the Congress-led Karnataka government has now approached the Chhattisgarh government and Siddaramaiah spoke to his Telangana counterpart K Chandrashekar Rao. The government is expected to know the available stock by Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka BJP has rubbished Siddaramaiah’s allegations and asked why the state government depends on Centre to implement its guarantees.

“Write it down, from now on if they fail to do anything they’ll point fingers at Central government. This state will go bankrupt in one year, then the first statement of Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar will be that they didn’t receive funds from the Center hence we couldn’t do anything. Didn’t you have any sense? You should have mentioned in your guarantee card that we will be able to provide this only if central government provides it to you, why didn’t you mention that?” said former revenue minister R Ashoka.

In 2013, Siddaramaiah first introduced the ‘Anna Bhagya’ scheme to BPL cardholders in Karnataka. It started with the state government offering families with only one person 10 kg rice and two-member families 20 kg and three members and above families getting a maximum of 30 kg per month.