Identify the correct statement/s from the following regarding Food Security Bill, 2013.
A. The Bill provides food safety benefits to the 50% of the urban population and 75% of the rural population.
B.

Question

Identify the correct statement/s from the following regarding Food Security Bill, 2013.
A. The Bill provides food safety benefits to the 50% of the urban population and 75% of the rural population.
B. Beneficiaries will be provided rice at Rs. 3/-kg, coarse grains at Re. 1/-kg and wheat at Rs. 2/-kg per month.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

The commission's final key marks option (2), 'Both A and B are incorrect'. That is the answer this paper was graded on, and it is recorded here as such. It is worth being straightforward with you about this one. The two figures the statements quote are the National Food Security Act, 2013's own headline provisions as the government has published them: coverage of up to 75% of the rural and 50% of the urban population, and subsidised issue prices of ₹3 per kg for rice, ₹2 per kg for wheat and ₹1 per kg for coarse grains. Read plainly, both printed statements match those provisions. The commission does not publish its reasoning for a key, and no defensible reading of the Act has been found that makes both statements wrong — so this card does not invent one. Learn the answer as keyed, and learn the Act's actual provisions below; they are what any other question on this topic will test.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This is what the printed statements support on a plain reading of the Act, but it is not the option the commission keyed. Where a card's research and the official key disagree, the key is what the paper was graded on and what is recorded here.  (c) Not the keyed option. It would also require statement B — the ₹3/₹2/₹1 issue prices — to be wrong, and those prices are the Act's own published figures.  (d) Not the keyed option. It would also require statement A — the 75% rural and 50% urban coverage — to be wrong, and that ceiling is stated in the Act itself.

Concept: The National Food Security Act, 2013 guarantees subsidised foodgrains to roughly two-thirds of India's population through the Targeted Public Distribution System, split into Priority households (entitled to 5 kg of foodgrains per person per month) and the poorest Antyodaya Anna Yojana households (entitled to 35 kg per family per month), both at central issue prices of Rs 3/kg for rice, Rs 2/kg for wheat, and Re 1/kg for coarse grains. The 75% rural and 50% urban figures are national-average coverage ceilings, not a flat rule applied identically in every state — actual state-wise coverage shares were separately computed using NSS household-consumption survey data.

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