Bhubaneswar: Chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Saturday announced his government's food security scheme on the lines of the Centre's National Food Security Act.

The state scheme will cover 34.44 lakh people, who were left out of the national scheme covering 3.26 crore people in Odisha. A beneficiary will receive 5kg of rice per month at the rate of Re 1 per kilo, and the state government will incur Rs 500 crore per year to execute the scheme.

Announcing that the scheme would be implemented from October 2 this year, Naveen said that despite his repeated pleas to the Centre, it had left 34.44 lakh beneficiaries from the act's purview.

"I will not allow a single poor person to be deprived from the benefits of the act," Naveen said while addressing grassroots-level representatives of 10 districts under his Ama Mukhya Mantri - Ama Katha (our chief minister, our views) programme through videoconferencing. It was his subsidised rice scheme that had helped Naveen retain power in 2009 and 2014.

His government had introduced Rs 2 per kilo rice in 2008, and in 2013, it reduced the price to Re 1.

Aware that it is a populist move, the Congress and the BJP are cautious in their criticism against the BJD.

Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Niranjan Patnaik said: "Why did the government wait for so many years when the list of beneficiaries have been drawn on the basis of 2011 census report? He has done it keeping the forthcoming general election in view."

On the other hand, Union tribal welfare minister Jual Oram said: "It was their (the BJD's) mistake, and they had omitted these beneficiaries while preparing list for the central scheme. Now, they are rectifying their mistakes."

Announcing the project, Naveen said: "After the Centre's Food Security Act was implemented, a number of poor people were left out as the Union government is providing ration based on the 2011 census. I had written several times to the Centre in this regard, but in vain."

In his letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Naveen had, in May, said: "Odisha was given a target of 3.26 crore beneficiaries, which was 78 per cent of the 2011 census figure of 4.19 crore. According to the 2011 census data, the rate of the population growth in Odisha was 14 per cent in the last decade. If we extrapolate this data, in 2018 the population of Odisha has increased by 10.22 per cent as compared to 2011," and argued for the inclusion of 3.6 crore beneficiaries from the state.