Kerala Demands For Food Grains From The Centre

A meeting was held between Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Monday. The meeting demanded higher allocation of food grains for the State under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). More allocation of subsidized sugar including food grains was sought by the state for distribution to migrant workers and welfare institutions.

According to the sources, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the state should be given food grains for public distribution system supply that it used to get before the implementation of NFSA. NFSA was rolled out by Kerala in November 2016 which sells food grains to the poor at highly subsidized rates through public distribution system or ration shops.

Food Minister Paswan told a daily, “The Kerala Chief Minister has placed many demands before us. One is increasing food grains allocation under the NFSA.”

Earlier the state used to get 16.25 lakh tonnes of food grains and is presently getting 14.25 lakh tonnes under the NFSA. The Union Food Minister Ram Vilas has said that a uniform formula is applied to all the states during the allocation of food grains under food security law.

One of the senior Ministry officials said, “Allocation under the NFSA is being made taking into account the last three years’ average food grains lifting of the State. And the average was 10 lakh tons per annum for Kerala. But more is being given to protect poor people.” Kerala has also asked for more allocation under the NFSA in order to meet the demand of over 15 lakh migrant workers in the State.