Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana: Free ration scheme extended by 3 months

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New Delhi: On Wednesday, the federal government agreed to extend the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) for an additional three months. The continuation of the free ration programme through December was authorised by the Union Cabinet at its meeting today, September 28.

The government will invest over Rs 40,000 crores in this programme over the next three months, it was determined in the meeting. The government has already invested 3.8 lakh crore rupees in this programme.

It is worth noting that no provision was made for the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) after Covid-19. Despite this, after the budget, on March 26, 2022, the government had announced to continue it for another 6 months. At that time the government had told that about Rs 80,000 crore would be spent on continuing this scheme for 6 more months. Now that the government has decided to extend it for three more months, it is estimated that about Rs 40,000 crores more will be spent on it.

Under this scheme, the government provides free rations to the ration card holder's family. Through this scheme, the government has so far distributed 1,003 lakh metric tonnes of food grains. The scheme was launched in the year 2020 to provide free 5 kg foodgrains per person per month. About 80 crore beneficiaries are covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) to reduce their hardship during the lockdown period.

The scheme has been extended multiple times since then and is now valid till December 2022.

Initially, in 2020-21, the PMGKAY scheme was announced only for a period of three months -- April, May and June 2020 (Phase-I). Later, the government extended the scheme from July to November 2020 (Phase-II).