With the Haryana Government getting access to the central data of socio-economic status of the people,the decks are clear for the state to implement the food security scheme on August 20. As per the Union Ministry of Rural Development the number of eligible beneficiaries has gone up in the rural areas by 54 per cent and 41 per cent in the urban areas. Earlier,the government has said that the number of beneficiaries in the rural and urban areas is almost similar. Chief Secretary,Pradeep Kumar Chaudhery told The Indian Express that Haryana was the first in the country to access the central data collected through a rural development ministry survey. We are now clear on the immediate benificiaries of the scheme. Our next job is to find out whom to exclude. As far as BPL,AAY and shelterless are concerned the scheme will be extended to them on August 20. However,we are likely to touch the figure of 1.2 crore beneficiaries when our own exercise to determine the beneficiaries gets over, said Chaudhery. As many as 54.41 lakh people 21.42 per cent of the population will be the immediate beneficiaries under AAY,BPL and state BPL. However,under the new scheme,the number of beneficiaries would increase to 1.2 crore constituting more than 51 per cent of the population. As per the data availed by the government,the figure is likely to add more than 60 lakh beneficiaries to the list. At present 38.6 lakh rural beneficiaries are benefitting from the Targetted Public Distribution System (TPDS). This is 23.35 per cent of the rural population. But after implementation of the new scheme 90 lakh rural beneficiaries would benefit from TPDS. This means more than 54 per cent of the rural population will benefit from the scheme. A total of 15 lakh beneficiaries getting the benefits under the TPDS in the urban constituting 17.91 per cent of the urban population. The scheme is likely to benefit 40 lakh more persons in the urban areas after implementation of the scheme,sources said.
