Senior JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar on Wednesday mooted setting up a national level committee to hammer problems in selection of beneficiaries for getting subsidised foodgrains under National Food Security Act (NFSA).
"Everybody in the country should get food. An independent committee at national level to remove the problems in beneficiary selection under NFSA should be constituted," he said.
Kumar said he was not in favour of selection of beneficiaries on the basis of Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC).
"There is always the issue of whether correct data has been entered in SECC. You never know what the person conducting the survey has written. The enumerated families are not provided any receipt about it so that they can identify mistakes and get them corrected," Kumar said.
To bolster his argument that data could be incorrect, the JD(U) leader said that while distributing compensation to flood-affected farmers in 2007 in different parts of Bihar he found out that over 95 per cent of them were small and marginal farmers, though the government data pegged them at 86 per cent.
The provision of 25 kg of rice, wheat and coarse cereal under the Act for a family of five a month is not enough for providing food security, he said.
Nitish Kumar was speaking at the inaugural address at a workshop on 'A Food Secure Bihar: Challenges and Way Forward' jointly organised by A N Sinha Institute of Social Studies (ANSISS) and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) here.
Bihar implemented the NFSA in February this year when Kumar was the chief minister of the state.
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