Bhubaneswar: The state government has drafted the Odisha State Food Security (Targeted Public Distribution System) Rules, 2020 as per the mandate given in the National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013.
The state food supplies and consumer welfare department has drafted the rules and sought opinions and suggestions from the public and concerned organisations in this regard.
“To implement provisions made under NFSA, we have to issue necessary rules. Earlier, we issued several notifications to execute the Act. To streamline it, we have drafted the rules and now it is under active consideration of the law department,” said a senior official of the department.
After getting approval from the law department, the rules will come into force, he said. The draft is having 11 criteria for identification of eligible beneficiaries and nine exclusion criteria, which were fixed earlier and now in force.
The government will set up an internal grievance redressal system for disposal of complaints, resolution of queries and provide information relating to provisions of the Act to the public.
The government will set up call centres, toll-free helpline numbers and websites to address queries. The call centres will provide support in Odia language or local dialect to the maximum extent possible.
In case the government fails to supply entitlements to beneficiaries within the end of the third week of the month, it will pay food security allowance to such people. The government will create a corpus fund for payment of food security allowance.
There is also a provision for conduct of periodic social audit on the functioning of fair price shops.