140mn not benefiting from food security law due to delayed census'

Congress parliamentary party chief Sonia Gandhi on Monday expressed concern over the delay in the decennial census by over four years, saying that outdated data has led to the exclusion of hundreds of millions of eligible people from food security benefits under the National Food Security Act (NFSA).

- 

Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, the former Congress president cited the budget allocations and said they showed the census was unlikely to be conducted this year too. She said the delay in the census prevented necessary revisions to beneficiary quotas, which continue to rely on data from the 2011 census despite the country's growing population. Gandhi estimated around 140 million people were being deprived of their right to food benefits under the NFSA, and called on the government to act.