Piyush Goyal to meet food ministers of States/UTs

New Delhi, Nov 24: The Department of Food and Public Distribution under Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution is organising an All India Food Ministers Meeting on Thursday in New Delhi. Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and Textiles Piyush Goyal will chair the meeting and will discuss the issue of community kitchen and other issues with food minister of all States/UTs. A writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court regarding establishing the concept of community kitchen across the country, formulation of requisite scheme to provide food to the needy persons and create a national food grid for those persons beyond the scope of the Public Distribution System to fight with hunger and malnutrition. The Supreme Court has directed the Centre to come up with a Model Community Kitchens Scheme agreeable to the States/Union Territories within three weeks’ time. The Court has also directed all the State Governments/Union Territories to attend the meeting to be arranged/organized by the Centre and cooperate with them in coming up with the said scheme, which can be made uniformly applicable to all the States/Union Territories. Some of the likely key issues that will be discussed during the meeting are Model Community Kitchen Scheme, One Nation One Ration Card-status of implementation, Aadhaar seeding of Ration Cards, Biometrically authenticated FPS transactions and others. Earlier, the Secretary, DFPD took a meeting on November 21 with Chief Secretaries and Food Secretaries of States and UTs to discuss the model Community Kitchen Scheme.