Udupi, August 3: Demanding the right to food to all citizens, the Udupi taluk unit of Communist Party of India (Marxist) staged “rasta roko” before Taluk Office on Thursday here.
The activists blocked the road for nearly five minutes and disrupted the vehicular movement. They were briefly detained by the police following the formalities of preventive arrest.
Speaking on the occasion, Udupi taluk Communist Party of India (Marxist) Secretary P Vishwanath Rai urged government to adopt universal public distribution system as the present classification under the BPL and APL system is totally unscientific.
He said that the government should secure the right to food to all citizens. He alleged that there is as many as 770 lakh tonnes of cereals decaying in the storehouses of the food department, which clearly indicates that there is no shortage of food in India. The annual requirement of food to the people in India is about 500 lakh tonnes. The government is not willing to offer food to the starving people, he alleged.
He said nearly 52 per cent of the populace in the country is incapable of earning a minimum of Rs 20 per day. In this context, the government has to reconsider its policies aiding unscientific division of APL and BPL systems. The government should assure a kilogram of rice or wheat at the cost of Rs 2 and it should provide up to 35 kilograms of rice or wheat per month. He accused that government is offering the facilities of tax deduction amounting up to Rs 5 lakhs crores to the corporate owners and has no fund to assure food security, he added.
Censuring that the poverty estimates of the planning commission is highly immoral, he said government should discard such wrong estimates. He also demanded that the government should implement the recommendations made in the report by Swaminathan Committee to protect the interest of poor people, farmers and also labourers. The government should also take steps on war footing to control price rises, he said.
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