Community Kitchen Scheme: Piyush Goyal to Hold ‘All India Food Ministers Meeting’ Today

Today, i.e. 25^th November 2021, the Union Consumer Affairs Minister Piyush Goyal will hold a meeting with the states regarding the ‘Model Community Kitchen Scheme’. The meeting will be a follow-up of the Supreme Court’s directions to the Centre on 16^th November, to come up with a community kitchen scheme that is agreeable to all states and UTs within three weeks. 

Goyal will chair the ‘All India Food Ministers Meeting’ to discuss the community kitchen scheme, along with the implementation of the One Nation One Ration Card and other issues. 

According to an official statement on Wednesday – “Some of the likely key issues that will be discussed during the meeting are Model Community Kitchen Scheme, One Nation One Ration Cards, Biometrically authenticated FPS transactions and others.” 

“A welfare state must ensure that nobody dies of hunger”, the Supreme Court observed. The Chief Justice of India (CJI) NV Ramana pressed for the framing of a pan-India scheme to run community kitchens across the states. 

The Apex court issued these directions to the Centre after hearing a petition, filed by activists Anun Dhawan, Ishann Singh, and Kunajan Singh, seeking the setting up of community kitchens and subsidized canteens in all states to ensure food security in the wake of the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, and creating a national food grid of people who are falling outside the purview of the Public Distribution System (PDS). 

An official statement said, “All states and UTs have been asked by the top court to attend Thursday’s meeting and cooperate with the Centre in coming up with the community kitchen scheme that can be made uniformly applicable across the country.” 

Four days ago, the Secretary of the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DPFD) held a meeting with Chief Secretaries and Food Secretaries of states and UTs to discuss the scheme. 

In India, many states like Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Delhi, and Jharkhand have already been running community kitchens that serve meals at subsidized rates in hygienic conditions.