The Samikhsya Correspondent
Raipur: Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel’s promise to ensure food security for all the people of the state is nearing its target at a faster pace.
The ambitious Universal Public Distribution Scheme (PDS) that was launched last year commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi has already covered 97 per cent of the people.
The scheme aims at providing ration card to all the families of the state.
With implementation of the scheme, priority ration card holding single member families are being provided 10 kg of rice while the two-member families are receiving 20 kg of rice.
Similarly, families having three to five members are entitled to receive 35 kg of rice while families with members above five are receiving seven kg of rice per member every month.
The rice is being provided at the rate of Re. one per kilogram.
The new PDS scheme has also allowed families of general category – both income tax payers and non-income tax payers – are also being provided food grains.
Under the general category ration cards, 10 kg of rice are offered to single-member family while a two-member family gets 20 kg. Families with a membership of three and above are entitled to get 35 kg of food grains at the rate of Rs.10 per kilogram.
At present, food grains are being provided to 9.39 lakh general ration card holder families.
The state government made a special budgetary allocation of Rs 4,000 crore in the previous financial year to ensure food security for each family.
