Anna Bhagya Scheme will only provide Rice and Dal to BPL families

Bengaluru: The State Governament’s ambitious project Anna Bhagya Yojana to supply Food Grains at free of cost to Priority Household (AAY+BPL) families across the State will now offer only seven kgs of rice and one kg of tur dal to its beneficiaries.

The food and civil supplies department has decided not to supply ragi, a staple in South Karnataka, and provide only wheat which is on demand for people of North Karnataka. It has also decided to stop distributing palm oil, sugar and salt.

During its launch in 2013, CM Siddaramaiah had announced 30kg of rice per Below Poverty Line (BPL) family. Over the last four years, demand for variety, spike in black-marketing of rice and efforts to capture people’s imagination drove the government to reinvent the scheme.

Beneficiaries were be receiving 2kgs of ragi, wheat, jowar, 30 kgs rice and a kilo of salt and sugar with a litre of palm oil till early this year. However, now these have been scrapped. Just a kilo of tur dal has been added to seven kilos of rice for every BPL card-holder.

Confirming that the government has decided to scrap ragi and jowar, minister U T Khader said: “We have stopped supplying ragi and jowar to BPL families. We have also stopped providing some of the other items due to factors such as low price and non-availability of central government subsidy.” The only other food grain which is available under Anna Bhagya is wheat, which, the minister said, is being provided on demand only in north Karnataka districts.