After Selfie Points In Railway Stations, RTI Reveals FCI’s Plans To Distribute Free Ration In Bags Featuring PM Modi At the Cost Of Crores Of Public Money

After the ‘Selfie Point’ controversy, on similar lines, another RTI response has exposed plans of the Central Government to use PM Narendra Modi’s picture on ration bags for branding ahead of Lok Sabha elections 2024. The Food Corporation of India sent communication on January 12, 2024, to all their regional offices across the country to seek tenders for woven laminated bags featuring a picture of Prime Minister Modi. These bags will be used to distribute food grains under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana.

In response to a Right To Information (RTI) query filed by activist Ajay Basudev Bose, the FCI Rajasthan regional office has responded that they have placed the order for 1,07,45,168 (more than 1.07 crore) bags at the rate of Rs 12.375 per bag. The RTI response stated that the contract for manufacturing and printing of such bags has been given to five contractors. Similarly, another response from FCI Nagaland confirmed that they have placed an order for similar bags at the rate of Rs 9.30 per bag. Other regional FCI offices including Maharastra, Haryana and Delhi have responded to the same RTI stating that they are yet to decide on the tender process, none rejecting the idea. Tamil Nadu, another state, has responded to the RTI stating that have thrown open the tender, yet to confirm the vendor or the rate for the supply of 1.14 crore synthetic bags

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman during the interim budget 2024 had announced there will be more than 80 crore beneficiaries who will be given free ration every month for the next five years, starting from January 2024. According to government data the PMGKAY initiative aims at supplying free food grains- 5 kg free wheat or rice per person/month along with 1 kg free whole chana to each family per month. Approximately 81.35 crore beneficiaries including people under Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), Priority Households (PHH), terminally ill persons or disabled persons or persons aged 60 years or more or single women or single men with no family or societal support or assured means of subsistence amongst others will be covered under PMGKAY.

The Cost

According to Rajasthan FCI’s RTI response, the total cost they will incur in a month is more than Rs 13 crores after printing the bags. Similarly, crores of money from Nagaland FCI, as confirmed by the RTI response, will be spent after procuring such bags with PM Modi’s face printed on them. Since FCI hasn’t confirmed how long they will continue with the plan of distributing free ration in such custom-made bags, fear is, that Rajasthan as one state will be spending more than Rs 13 crores every month after the Modi branded synthetic bags.

Cumulative cost after factoring in every state that obliges to the FCI circular can run into several hundreds of crores every month after printing such custom-made ration bags if the average cost of printing those bags across all states is around Rs 10 per piece.

Kerala as a state has rejected the idea already and since the West Bengal government gives ration from the state coffers, they too might not adhere to the FCI circular.

FCI in its circular hasn’t confirmed if all the beneficiaries—which is more than 80 crores—will be given ration in such bags alone every month under the PMGKAY scheme.

The PMGKAY was introduced in the year 2020 after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic to assist people from impoverished backgrounds with free rations. At that time, the scheme began by covering more than 75 crore beneficiaries. The scheme then never mandated the distribution of food grains in any specific kind of bag, let alone synthetic bags with PM Modi’s face on them. According to government data, the 75 crore figure in 2020 has gone up to more than 80 crore beneficiaries in the year 2024.

It was the RTI response from Indian railways to the query from that same activist Ajay Basudev Bose had revealed how railways had spent more than Rs 1 lakh and more than Rs 6 lakh after temporary and permanent selfie point installations respectively in different railways stations across different railway divisions, with cost running into several hundreds of crores, what opposite had termed as BJP’s PR stunt ahead of elections.​