Meem Afzal and Ashok Choudhary at the news meet in Patna on Wednesday. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Patna, July 17: Congress national spokesman Meem Afzal today launched its campaign in the state to make people aware of the salient features and benefits of the UPA’s dream project “food security”.

“Food security is the dream project of the UPA government. It is the largest welfare scheme of the world. The objective behind rolling out the scheme is to protect the people from starvation deaths. The government, for the first time, has given the people a right to food. Earlier, there was no statutory provision to provide food to the citizens,” Afzal told reporters here.

As a part of its strategy to reach out to people, Congress has entrusted its spokesmen and some other senior leaders to visit each and every state to make the people aware about its features, benefits and importance of food security.

Elaborating the details of the scheme, Afzal said the scheme would benefit around 81 crore people out of 120 crore, which means that 67 per cent of the country’s population would be covered under the scheme.

“The beneficiaries would get rice, wheat and coarse grains at Rs 3, Rs 2 and Rs 1 per kg, respectively,” he said. “The rate has been fixed for three years before which it cant be altered. The food security would cover 75 per cent and 50 per cent population of rural and urban areas respectively.”