Chennai, June 18 (PTI): Tamil Nadu has asked the Centre to release the pending custom milled rice (CMR) subsidy of Rs 2,609 crore to facilitate paddy procurement from farmers, state Minister R Kamaraj said on Thursday.

The Minister for food and civil supplies, who interacted through a video conference with the Union Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan from the Secretariat here, said the Central government would be ready to roll out the 'One Nation, One Card Scheme' in Tamil Nadu by September. "The subsidy of Rs 2,609 crore is pending for release from the Centre. We request the amount to be immediately released to facilitate the paddy procurement from the farmers," Kamaraj said in a speech copy released to the media. The Minister recalled the Chief Minister K Palaniswami's letter to Paswan on June 12 for extension of free supply of rice and pulses to all cardholders in the state till September.

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"To mitigate the sufferings of the people during the COVID-19 lockdown, the Chief Minister has also announced distribution of Rs 1,000 in cash to all rice cardholders, amounting to Rs 218.35 crore," he said. On the rollout of 'One Nation, One Card Scheme', he said 99.72 per cent of the beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS) have already been Aadhaar seeded. The government has issued orders sanctioning Rs 38 crore to upgrade the e-point of sales devices in all the 34,773 PDS shops with procurement and installation of biometric devices. Integration of the system would be completed by September for onboarding 'One Nation, One Card Scheme' and the government would be ready by September, he added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)