Rangarajan panel rejects NAC recommendation

• The C. Rangarajan Committee on the proposed food security bill favours legal entitlement of subsidised foodgrains to the poor (below the poverty line), but has rejected the National Advisory Council's recommendation that above the poverty line (APL) households be partially covered, saying it is not feasible at the current levels of grain production and procurement.
• The NAC, headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had recommended 75 per cent coverage of the population in two phases, with 90 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban population included.
• The Rangarajan Committee, however, suggested that 46 per cent of the rural population and 28 per cent of the urban population be entitled to 35 kg of rice at Rs. 3 a kg or wheat at Rs. 2 a kg per household a month. The figures were arrived at by adding 10 per cent beneficiaries (to cover those on the margins) to the Tendulkar Committee's poverty estimates of 41.8 per cent of the rural poor and 25.7 per cent of the urban poor. The poverty figures matched the ones provided by the NAC.