New Delhi, Aug 13 (TruthDive): As an all-party meet on Food Security Bill is scheduled for today, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) apparent prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking to call a chief ministers’ conference before passing the bill.
Even after BJP president Rajnath Singh gave a green signal supporting the bill on Sunday, the letter communication from the Gujarat chief Minister has raised doubts among political parties whether the BJP will support the bill.
Modi in his letter to the Prime Minister is believed to have quoted saying that the bill does not seem to contain the basic requirement which any food security legislation should meet and is doubtful to achieve the goal for which the Union government has taken this step. Claiming that the issue concerns both the Centre and state governments, the Gujarat Chief Minister said that poor families have been made ‘food insecure’ through the ordinance which does not fulfil the basic need of food security.
Referring towards the insufficiency in the ordinance, Modi said “without specifying eligibility criteria and fixing individual entitlements, number of beneficiaries has been fixed which might lead to regional disparity among different states.”
The ordinance which proposes to reduce the entitlement of below poverty line (BPL) families from 35 kg per family to only 25 kg per average family of five persons cannot be the objective of any food security legislation which reduces the privilege of those who have been identified as being below the poverty line, said the BJP poll panel chief.
Meanwhile, taking a dig at Narendra Modi, Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh said that Modi instead of writing a letter to the Prime Minister could have raised the issue in his party meeting. Singh in microblogging site Twitter quoting, “Modi seems to have no trust on the BJP Parliamentary Party to raise right issues on Food Security Bill, and therefore writes directly to PM.”
Voicing their differences on the issue, Tamil Nadu chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh had already made clear about their dissatisfaction over the alleged Food Security Bill.