President Pranab Mukherjee signs Food Security Ordinance

President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday gave his consent to the UPA government’s Food Security Ordinance and signed it. The Ordinance will now have to be passed by both houses of the Parliament within six weeks of their next sitting else it will lapse and will have to be promulgated again. [caption id=“attachment_930985” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] President Pranab Mukherkee. PTI[/caption] The government had sent the ordinance on food security to President Pranab Mukherjee for his consent on Thursday. The President’s Secretariat had received the ordinance at 10 pm on Thursday, Rashtrapati Bhavan sources said. Brushing aside political opposition, the UPA had on Wednesday decided to issue the ordinance to give two-third population of India the right to get 5 kgs of food grain every month at highly subsidised rates of Rs 1-3 per kg. The Food Security programme when implemented will be the biggest in the world with the government spending estimated at Rs 125,000 crore annually on supply of about 62 million tonnes of rice, wheat and coarse cereals to 67 per cent of the population. Opposition parties  slammed the government bringing the ordinance, accusing it of bypassing Parliament which is due to meet in a few weeks and acting in a hurry with an eye on polls. The government rejected the charge saying it wants to provide food security to crores and alleged that Opposition leaders, who had earlier disrupted Parliament sessions were now shedding “crocodile tears” over parliamentary propriety. With PTI inputs