Jharkhand government has announced that it will provide free rations to nearly 20 lakh poor people, who are not covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), till December 2023.

“This was bound to happen with the Union government deciding in December last year to provide free ration to 81.35 crore poor people under NFSA for one year from January 2023. The Jharkhand government could not afford to lag behind in view of the Assembly election that would take place in 2024 and decided to distribute free food grains to those not covered under the NFSA but covered under Jharkhand Food Security Scheme,” said a senior official in the food and civil supplies department.

The decision, taken on Thursday evening, would cost the state exchequer a minimum of an additional Rs 12 crore annually.

Earlier, beneficiaries of the NFSA were getting rice at Rs 3 per kg and wheat at Rs 2 per kg.

However, the poor people who were left out of NFSA were given green ration cards under Jharkhand Food Security Scheme by the state government in 2020 with each member of the poor person’s family entitled to receive 5kg of rice at the rate of Rs 1 per kg every month. Now they will be receiving the rice free of cost.

The Jharkhand food and civil supplies department is almost in the final leg of awarding work orders to a private bidder for the supply of food grains to green ration card holders from next week.

“The rice has been procured and distributed by the Food Corporation of India (FCI- a central government agency) since 2020. However, in the last few months, FCI expressed its inability to supply rice citing difficulty in railway rakes and procurement of rice. We had to go to tender for a private bidder. The process is almost complete and the private bidder would be awarded the work order by next week and would be supplying even the January month’s quota of free ration to green ration card holders,” said a senior official of the food and civil supplies department.

The state cabinet on Thursday also gave its nod for developing and renovating tourist hotspots under public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. It was decided to appoint “transaction advisors” from among the 12 consultants empanelled by the Union tourism ministry.

“The government would be arranging land at tourist hotspots and giving it to the consultants who in turn would be developing infrastructures to attract tourists.