Bengaluru, 16 Oct 

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his Deputy DK Shivakumar flagged that there was a corpus amount of food and grains being wasted in the State. 

Speaking at an event marking World Food Day at Vidhana Soudha on Thursday, Siddaramaiah said, “In Bengaluru alone, 943 tons of food are wasted every year. According to a GKVK study report, we are wasting food worth approximately Rs 360 crore.” 

Noting that wasting food was a “sinful act”, he said that the State government had launched the Anna Bhagya Scheme to benefit the weaker sections of society. 

“The Food Security Act was brought into effect by (late) prime minister Manmohan Singh,” he said. “The BJP strongly opposed the Food Security Act. The BJP’s ideology is against the poor, and this must be understood.”

He noted that the government was modifying the Anna Bhagya scheme, which initially provided 10kgs of rice to beneficiaries to now include 5kgs of rice and 5kgs of oil, lentils, sugar, salt and other items to prevent hoarding and wastage.

Both Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah vowed strict action against those who were found hoarding Anna Bhagya rice.

“We have not taken this decision under any pressure from any quarter. This decision has been arrived at based on a survey and discussions with MLAs. On average, a person uses 5-6 kgs of rice in a month,” Shivakumar added.

“SM Krishna introduced the mid-day meal scheme. Siddaramaiah launched the Anna Bhagya scheme.”