Wastage of foodgrain a crime,says SC

Even as the Opposition rocked Parliament over price rise,the Supreme Court on Tuesday said wastage of even a single foodgrain...

Even as the Opposition rocked Parliament over price rise,the Supreme Court on Tuesday said wastage of even a single foodgrain in a poverty-ridden country is a crime.

In a country where people are starving,wastage of a single grain is a crime. It has come out in official record that food stock is lying wasted, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma observed on how food stock is lying rotten at government godowns without reaching the poor and needy.

A SC -appointed committee,set up to do a reality check on the Public Distribution System (PDS) mechanism,had described it as inefficient and corrupt,plagued by black marketing and unofficially run by a vicious cartel of bureaucrats,fair price shop owners and middlemen.

The committee headed by former SC judge Justice D P Wadhwa had in its report to the apex court said the Rs 28,000-crore subsidy annually spent by the government was pocketed by vested interests and suggested drastic action to stem the rot.

The court on Tuesday directed the Union Food Secretary to respond in an affidavit to the committees recommendation for expansion of PDS quota for Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. The panel said this could be done by restricting public distribution only to those Above Poverty Line (APL) consumers earning below Rs 1 lakh.

Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves,appearing for NGO PUCL in a 2001 PIL on PDS hiccups,submitted that government records show that 62 million tonnes of foodgrains is at present stored at government depots in the open,with every risk of it being destroyed. Wheat is rotting. Why not come out with a proposal to immediately distribute food commodities,lying in godowns riddled with lack of storage space,to the BPL families, the court asked.

The court wanted the Food Secretary,who has to file an affidavit in six weeks,to consider distribution of ration through co-operative societies instead of private licensees.