Hyderabad: About 1.91 crore people in Telangana State are eligible for subsidised rice as per the Central government’s Food Security Act (FSA) but the state government has added an additional 35.22 lakh beneficiaries by raising the income limit taking the total number of beneficiaries to 2.36 crore.
While the Central law prescribed an annual inc-ome limit of Rs 60,000 for rural areas and Rs 75,000 in urban areas as an eligibility criteria to claim the benefit, the state government has raised this limit to Rs 1.5 lakh and '2 lakh respectively.
Under the FSA, the Centre supplies rice at Rs 4.40 per kg to Telangana State but the state government is providing the same to beneficiaries at just Rs 1 per kg.
FSA prescribed upper cap of 5 kgs of rice per person but the state government has increased this limit to 6 kgs and also lifted the ceiling on rice quantity for each household.
For instance, if any household has 10 members in the family, they are entitled for 60 kgs of rice at the rate of 6 kgs per head as against the earlier ceiling of 20 kg per household. With this, the subsidy burden on state government has increased to Rs 2,744 crore this year.
Civil supplies minister Etela Rajender on Sunday informed the Legislative Assembly that the TRS government is committed to provide subsidised rice to the poor irrespective of the financial burden.
He said the Centre is supplying 1.08 lakh metric tonnes of rice per month while the state is purchasing an additional 9 lakh metric tonnes to meet the demand.
Mr Rajender said 4.06 lakh bogus ration cards have been weeded out in GHMC limits but 21,9496 cards were restored after reverification.
“We have received 2.56,704 fresh applications for ration cards from all the 31 districts. 77,100 have already been approved , 12,623 rejected and 1,66,981 are under inquiry,” he stated.
He said that earlier ration cards were taken to avail welfare schemes such as Arogyasri, fee reimbursement, scholarships etc, but the beneficiaries never took subsidised rice. “With this, the unclaimed subsidy rice worth thousands of crore of rupees was diverted to black market. To check this, we have removed all the benefits associated with ration card. Ration card is meant for only rice and nothing else.,” the minister explained.
