During COVID-19 restrictions, the Department of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs (FCS&CA) has distributed a massive 103209 MTs of foodgrains among the beneficiaries across all the 20 districts of Jammu & Kashmir last month while distribution of foodgrains for the current month has been already started by the Department from 3rd June.According to a spokesman of the FCS&CA Department, adequate distribution of foodgrains was ensured in all the 20 districts of J&K in May 2021 with 35190.20 MTs distributed under National Food Security Act (NFSA) achieving a foodgrain distribution target of 96.20%. Similarly, 31791.44 MTs were distributed under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKAY) achieving a foodgrain distribution target of 95.91%. Additionally, in other schemes, 16068.06 MTs were distributed under non NFSA window and 20159.13 MTs under J&K Government-run, Jammu & Kashmir Food Entitlement Scheme (JKFES). He added that for the months of May and June, the Department had to run additional cycle of distribution of free ration to AAY and Priority Households only, as ordered by GoI under PMGKAY.Giving details of the beneficiaries covered in J&K under two crucial schemes of NFSA and PMGKAY, the spokesman said these include 1598980 ration card holders of AAY and Priority Households each under NFSA and PMGKAY.
He said 95.57% and 95.41% ration card holders, respectively, availed rations under these two most crucial food distribution schemes during May.The spokesman said for the month June 2021, foodgrain allocation of about 36 thousandMTs has been generated under NFSA, 19523 MTs under non NFSA and 32,723 MTs under PMGKAY and the distribution of the same has been started from 3rd June, as a minimum of first 2-days of the month are required for the database generation for the Point of Sale (PoS) devices.Elaborating on the schemes, he said NFSA is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme under which highly subsidized foodgrains are being provided by FCS&CA Department, to Antyodaya Anna Yojana(AAY) and to the Priority House Hold(PHH)categories and also to an an extent to non NFSA category.“PMGKAY-III is a special foodgrains package announced by the Prime Minister for the months of May and June 2021, to provide foodgrains to the AAY and PHH beneficiaries free of cost, at the scale of 5kgs per person” he said and added that JKFES is the Food Entitlement scheme of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir to provide additional 5 Kgs of foodgrains to the deserving beneficiaries upto the maximum scale of 35Kgs to a household.The spokesman further said that 675 One Nation, One Ration Card (ONORC) transactions have been reported for the month of May 2021 under which the foodgrains have been distributed to some Inter-State beneficiaries also.“Pertinently J&K has achieved a target of 3,406 ONORC transactions from July 2020 to May 2021 placing J&K at 6th position, in terms of the highest number of transactions across the country,” he said.