Patna: Reacting to the Centre's warning on fulfilling all the conditions of National Food Security Act, Bihar government today said it was Union government's “conspiracy” to deprive the state people of the benefits of the food law.
“It smacks of conspiracy against Bihar,” Food Minister Shyam Rajak said in a statement reacting to Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister Ramvilas Paswan's warning that if the state failed to provide list of beneficiaries by December 31, it might lose benefits of the Food law.
“The BJP government which deprived Bihar of special status, special package and special attention is now preparing ground to take away benefits of food law from people of the state,” Rajak said.
The Bihar minister said the state had uploaded a list of beneficiaries at the NIC (National Informatics Centre) website in March this year itself.
“Paswan should have talked only after acquiring such information otherwise he runs the risk of becoming a subject of mockery,” he added.
He said the names of around one crore beneficiaries could not find place in the list somehow, following which they registered complaints.
“Of the total complaints, more than 47 lakh have already been attended to and others are being looked into,” he said adding the state was making all efforts to include names of every deserving person by end of December.
Rajak also denounced Paswan's comment on bonus.
“We had talked about loss to the farmers of the entire country due to Centre's advisory against bonus and not only about Bihar,” he said in reaction to Paswan questioning the protest of JD(U) government over Centre's directive against bonus to states exceeding target of procurement.
