Dimapur, May 6 (EMN): Department of Food and Public Distribution under the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, government of India, has decided to allocate additional food grains free of cost at 5 kg per person per month to nearly 79.88 crore beneficiaries covered under NFSA (AAY, PHH and DBT) over and above the NFSA allocation for a period of two months i.e. May and June.
In a letter to the principal secretary/ secretaries of Food and Civil Supplies department of all states/ UTs, the under secretary to government of India, K Roy Varghese informed that the lifting period of the additional food grains would be upto May 31. Further, all the states/ UTs are directed to lift their respective additional allocations in one go at the earliest subject to availability of stocks with FCI within the state/ UT.
Stating that the above allocation would be in addition to the regular monthly allocation under NFSA, the under secretary has asked the states/ UTs to provide wide publicity about this additional allocation so that each and every beneficiary is informed about their entitlement of free food grains under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY). States and UTs are also asked to make special efforts to encourage migrant NFSA beneficiaries to enable them to use the facility of portability under ‘one nation one ration card’ (ONORC) plan.
It further added that the government of India would bear the entire cost on account of such distribution including food subsidy, intra-state transportation and dealer’s margin/ additional dealers’ margin, without any sharing by states/ UTs.
