By IANS,
Raipur : Chhattisgarh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government Wednesday launched a food security scheme to provide rice at Rs.2 and Re.1 a kilogram and free salt to 3.7 million families.
The new scheme has replaced the Chief Minister’s Food Assistance Scheme under which rice was supplied at Rs.3 a kilogram.
Launched in January 2008, the earlier scheme was the brainchild of Chief Minister Raman Singh and was a prime factor in BJP’s victory in the assembly polls last November.
“The scheme is designed to ensure food security among 37 lakh poor families who form some 70 percent of the state’s population,” Singh said while announcing it at a remote village in the poverty-hit Surguja district Wednesday.
Of the beneficiary families, 700,000 with Antyodaya cards – given to people at the bottom of the income chain – will be provided rice at Re.1 a kilogram.
Each beneficiary family is entitled to 35 kilograms of rice a month besides two kilograms of iodized salt free of cost.