A mere 33% of the eight lakh tonnes of foodgrain (wheat and rice) and 56% of 29,132 tonnes of gram, meant to be distributed to migrants under the Atma Nirbhar Bharat package, has reached them, reveals Data from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
In the wake of the situation created by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centre in May announced a set of measures under the “Atma Nirbhar Bharat” package to help mitigate the problems of the migrant workers.
To help the maximum number of migrants, and all those who were neither covered under NFSA (National Food Security Act) nor under any other state public distribution scheme (PDS) scheme, the Union Food Ministry had allocated about 8 lakh tonnes of foodgrains to all states/UTs under the package for free of cost distribution.
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The Centre offered 5 kg of foodgrains and 1 kg gram (whole) per person per month for May and June.
Later on, it was admitted by the Centre that the scheme didn’t perform as promised as ‘the identification process of genuine beneficiaries took some time’ because of which States were given two more months — July and August — to distribute the already lifted foodgrains.
But out of eight lakh tonnes of foodgrain dedicated for the migrants, 6.38 lakh tonnes was lifted by the states and union territories, and only 2.64 lakh tonnes distributed in the past four months, shows the data as on August 31.
About 17 States/UTs were able to utilize 80% or more foodgrains in relation to their assessment. The States/UTs are Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Chandigarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu And Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and West Bengal.
In May, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that under the scheme, 8 crore migrant workers who do not have ration cards would be benefitted from this scheme. However, the figure of 2.80 crore migrant workers benefitted under this scheme has been reported by states to the center.
A Food Ministry official has now said that the scheme of free foodgrains for migrants had ended on Monday, August 31, as no state asked for the extension of the scheme.
