New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman announced the second trench of measures of the stimulus package, focus on the poor and lower middle class. Speaking to the media persons in a press conference on Thursday she said that in this package rental housing facility for migrant workers, free food grains for those without ration card and loan schemes for farmers and street vendors.

In her address she said that the problem the poor have faced in accessing food grains in the wake of the Covid- 19. She said that free grains and a 1Kg of Chana Dal for these families for the next two months. The Modi administration would bear the Rs. 3, 500 crore cost of distributing 8 lakh tons of wheat and rice and 50, 000 tons of Chana Dal, she said. She also announced that “One Nation, One Ration Card” scheme will use Aadhar to allow those entitled to access the public distribution system draw their quota from anywhere in the country.

The scheme facility should be operational by next March, she said. The Government hoped to cover 83% of beneficiaries, a number equal to 67% of the population by August 1^st. Her another big announcement was the decision to launch affordable rental housing complexes or workers hostels, meant to provide social security to the urban poor and students on a PPP basis. The measures come against the back drop of the movement of millions of workers from large industrial hubs i.e. as Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat to the less affluent states they come from, an exodus which has come to define the misery wrought by the Covid- 19.