The Hindu : National : PDS foodgrains not diverted: West Bengal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007
ePaper

National

National

PDS foodgrains not diverted: West Bengal

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: The West Bengal government has denied an allegation reportedly made by Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar that foodgrains meant for the public distribution system in the State were being diverted to Bangladesh.

“No such case has been brought to our notice and if such diversions were being made, we would have been intimated by the Border Security Force, which is a Central force,” Food and Supply Minister Paresh Adhikari told The Hindu on Tuesday.

The Centre, he claimed, “is on the other hand largely responsible for the shortages in the public distribution system because of the abrupt reduction in supplies, particularly of rice and wheat.”

“It has suddenly drastically cut down food supplies to the above poverty line sections and the per capita allotment of both rice and wheat has come down drastically,” Mr. Adhikari added.

The central committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at its recent meeting here condemned the Centre’s reported decision to further cut food supplies to APL sections at a time when “the public distribution system is in a state of virtual collapse due to the targeting system which has excluded large sections of the poor.”

The recent incidents in which ration dealers in certain districts were attacked and their houses set on fire were the result of a conspiracy hatched by those bent on destabilising the PDS in the State, Biman Bose, chairman of the Left Front Committee, has said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National