New Delhi, April 8: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today set up three working groups of chief ministers to involve states in dealing with the price spike and ensuring effective distribution of foodgrains.

The Centre and the states are blaming each other for the rise in food inflation, which soared to 17.7 per cent in the last week of March. The working groups will come up with concrete solutions to the production and distribution problems to check the volatility in the prices of essential commodities.

In today’s meeting with chief ministers, Singh emphasised that the government’s primary concern was to insulate the poor from rising prices. He said efforts should be made to bridge the gap between the farm and retail prices of food items.

According to Singh, food production needs to grow at higher rates but that is not enough to achieve food security for all.

“For that, we need to strengthen the public distribution system to prevent large scale leakages and diversion of foodgrain and rectify exclusion and inclusion errors in the identification of below poverty line beneficiaries,” he said.

According to agriculture and food minister Sharad Pawar, the first working group on agricultural production will be headed by Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and will have the chief ministers of Punjab, Bengal and Bihar.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi will head the working group on consumer affairs. It will have the chief ministers of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh as members.

The third group on food and public distribution will be headed by Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and will include the chief ministers of Chhattisgarh and Assam as well as C. Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council.