15.5 lakh families yet to get promised atta, dal
Saturday, 19/01/2013
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2013/20130119/punjab.htm#8
Chandigarh : More than 15.5 lakh blue-card-holder families in Punjab are still waiting for their monthly share of wheat and pulses under the ambitious atta dal scheme launched by the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) government.
Not only has the floating of tenders been delayed, but the Finance Department has also not released the grant to the Department of Food and Supplies, said sources.
Confirming the non-receipt of the grant, a senior official said, “We do have the quota to distribute flour this month. However, we have no money to purchase pulses.” The government spends approximately Rs 8 crore per month on the scheme.
Sources said that instead of the provision for a variety of pulses, as it was earlier, people were only getting their monthly share of ‘urd dal’ at the moment.
Earlier, the government was providing several pulses on subsidised rate. The government was, at that time, buying 3,100 tonnes of pulses every month from public sector undertakings under a Central scheme. The supply of pulses stopped in June last year.
To a family of five members, the government gives 2.5 kg of dal at a subsidised rate of Rs 20 per kg and 25 kg of wheat at Rs 4 per kg. The original scheme, launched in August 2007, provided for giving 35 kg wheat to each family.
The office of the Comptroller and Auditor General had pulled up the government for diverting wheat meant for Above-Poverty Line (APL) families to the quota of the atta dal scheme families.
It was pointed out that 5.52 lakh tonnes of wheat worth Rs 648.69 crore (for 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10), meant for the Centre’s APL scheme, had been diverted to the atta dal scheme.
The state agencies, at one point in time, had procured wheat and pulses after securing loans from banks. The government, however, did not pay the agencies on time.
