Food Security Act to be implemented in UP from today

Lucknow: The Food Security Act is set to be implemented across Uttar Pradesh from Tuesday, an official said.

Once the act comes into effect, poor families will get wheat at Rs 2 and rice at Rs 3 per kg.

Until now, only families under the "Antyodaya" scheme were being benefited and the families above and below the poverty line (APL and BPL) had to pay more.

The law has been already implemented in 28 districts from January 1, but now would be spread across all the 75 districts of the state, Principal Secretary (Food and Civil Supplies) Sudheer Garg informed.

The complete implementation of the act will only happen by April as some real time data at some districts are yet to be compiled.

Till now, the districts which were being benefited include Etawah, Mainpuri, Amroha, Agra, Auraiyya, Baghpat, Basti, Bijnore, Bulandshahr, Farukkhabad, Firozabad, Noida, Ghaziabad, Jalaun, Hapur, Jhansi, Kannauj, Kanpur city, Kanpur rural, Lucknow, Mathura, Lalitpur, Meerut, Sant Kabeernagar, Siddhartthanagar, Mahoba, Amirpur and Chitrakoot.

However, the implementation has been put on hold for the time being in Lucknow after the district magistrate Raj Shekhar discovered a large number of discrepancies.