Chennai:
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging the Centre to reconsider proposed amendments to the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, warning that the changes could sharply reduce foodgrain entitlements for nearly 70 lakh of the state’s poorest and most vulnerable people.
In his letter, Vijay sought retention of the existing provision under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), under which every eligible household receives 35 kilograms of foodgrains every month irrespective of the number of family members.
The draft National Food Security (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposes replacing this with an entitlement of 7 kilograms of foodgrains per person per month, subject to a maximum ceiling of 35 kilograms per household.
While the Centre has said the amendment aims to “remove intra-category inequities and align entitlements more closely with nutritional requirements”, Vijay argued that “the practical effect will be a substantial reduction in the quantum of foodgrains reaching the poorest households of Tamil Nadu”, since the state’s average family size is only 3.54 members.
Tamil Nadu currently has 18.64 lakh AAY ration cards covering 69.27 lakh beneficiaries, including widows, persons with disabilities, senior citizens without regular income, tribal families, landless agricultural labourers and daily wage earners.
The Chief Minister said the NFSA was enacted to provide “an assured, unconditional entitlement” to the poorest households and warned that changing the system to a per-capita entitlement with a household ceiling would “effectively penalise states with small family size, especially southern Indian states, who have effectively implemented the family planning scheme of the Government of India.”
Giving figures to underline the likely impact, Vijay said Tamil Nadu currently receives 65,261 metric tonnes of rice, wheat and ragi every month for AAY beneficiaries, supplied free of cost by the Centre. Under the proposed formula, this allocation would fall to about 42,040 metric tonnes.
Vijay cautioned that such a reduction would affect “more than seventy lakh poor, vulnerable and marginalised sections of society.” He also noted that rice supplied through the scheme forms the staple for all three meals a day for many beneficiary families and “cannot be substituted with any other commodity from the open market”, warning that doing so would increase out-of-pocket expenses and push vulnerable families towards poverty, malnutrition and hunger.
Requesting Modi’s intervention, Vijay urged the Centre to retain the existing household-based entitlement of 35 kilograms of foodgrains per month under the AAY “irrespective of the number of members in the family”, saying it has remained in force since the inception of the Act.
