No funds for food security in current plan: Ahluwalia

The Planning Commission has expressed inability to provide funds for implementation of the National Food Security Act in the closing stages of the Eleventh Five Year Plan, saying that this would amount to diversion of funds from existing schemes.

Planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, in a presentation for the National Advisory Council (NAC) in New Delhi yesterday, called for the rollout of the scheme from the beginning of the 12th Five Year Plan, which gets underway in April, 2012.

Ahluwalia is learned to have told the NAC during his interaction that ideas evolving in the course of the presenatation should be integrated with the 12th Five Year Plan so that funds could be earmarked for the right to food scheme.

While the draft National Food Security Bill is to be prepared during the next meeting of NAC, which is scheduled for 23October, members yesterday decided to go in for universal coverage of the scheme, which would translate into common, but differentiated entitlements, for every section of the society.

The beneficiaries, it was decided, will be divided into three broad groups -AAY / BPL, APL and the extremely vulnerable sections such as HIVAIDS patients, the old and the homeless, infirm, destitute and street children.

The AAY and BPL categories do not have economic access to food, it was therefore felt that they needed to be provided food and national security at a ''reasonable cost,'' something that could be within their means.