Fair price agents demand rice at subsidized price for poor beneficiaries

From our Staff Correspondent

Dibrugarh, Oct 29: More than 48,350 poor beneficiaries are to be deprived of subsidized support price rice at Rs. 3 per kg, which they have been entitled to get through fair price shops under the Food Security Act , 2013 from November, 2015.

The decision, what All Dibrugarh District Fair Price Agents Association (ADDFPAA) said, is a Diwali gift from the Assam Government to a large number of poor beneficiaries of the State.

Last month, the ADDFPAA claimed, the Union Petroleum Ministry had reduced the allotment of subsidized blue kerosene quota by 36.44 per cent and thereby deprived hundreds of poor and needy people of the district from subsidized kerosene by curtailing a total of 4 lakh litres from allotted quota of kerosene for Dibrugarh district.

The joint secretary of Food and Civil Supplies Department, Government of Assam , Moni Rat Mahanta by a letter vide  no FSA.92/2008/pt/630, had directed  to curtail the me of the State Government approved beneficiaries who were enrolled in the computer later to June 1, 2016. As a result, the beneficiaries who had been benefitted till date under the Food Security Act, 2013, are to be dispossessed from the rice under support price.

The ADDFPA in its emergency meeting held on Friday here, while expressing serious concern over causing suffering to such a large number of poor beneficiaries for negligence and fault of the   government approved computer institution Amtron, resolved to urge upon the State Government to reconsider the anti-people approach and initiate necessary administrative steps to ensure rice at the subsidized price of Rs 3 per kg to all deprived beneficiaries.