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NEW DELHI, 31 Aug: Finance Secretary T V Somanathan on Wednesday said the government is yet to take a decision on extending PMGKAY under which 5 kilograms of foodgrains is provided free of cost to the poor.<\/p>\n
Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY) is to end on September 30.<\/p>\n
It was launched in March 2020 with an aim to mitigate hardships being faced by poor people in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
Since then, the scheme has been extended several times.<\/p>\n
The last extension is for six months and that ends on September 30.<\/p>\n
“Decision is yet to be taken,” Somanathan said in response to a question regarding extension of the PMGKAY.<\/p>\n
In the last two years, around Rs 2. 6 lakh crore has been spent under the scheme and it will cost another Rs 80,000 crore with the extension of six months.<\/p>\n
In March 2020, the Centre launched the scheme to provide free 5 kg foodgrains per person per month to over 80 crore beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) to reduce the hardships of people during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
The free foodgrains are provided over and above the normal quota given under the NFSA at a highly subsidised rate of Rs 2-3 per kg.<\/p>\n
Initially, in 2020-21, PMGKAY scheme was announced only for a period of three months of April, May and June 2020 (Phase-I).<\/p>\n
Later, the government extended the scheme from July to November 2020 (Phase-II).<\/p>\n
The Centre in April 2021 re-introduced the scheme for a period of two months of May and June 2021 (Phase-III) and extended it for another five months from July to November 2021 (Phase-IV).<\/p>\n
The scheme was again extended from December 2021 to March 2022 (Phase-V). (PTI)<\/p>\n
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NEW DELHI, 31 Aug: Finance Secretary T V Somanathan on Wednesday said the government is yet to take a decision on extending PMGKAY under which 5 kilograms of foodgrains is provided free of cost to the poor. Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY) is to end on September 30. It was launched in March […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-199340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-national"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}