Congress president Sonia Gandhi's dream legislation on the national food security was stuck in the union cabinet meeting here on Tuesday, with indications that a revised one will come up in the next meeting likely only after the prime minister returns from his three-day Russia trip from Thursday.

The bill was scuttled by Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, who threw the spanner with a dissent note in the morning in his capacity as the agriculture minister to assert that feeding over 64 percent of the country's population with highly subsidised food grains will hit the farmers as the government will not be able to get the due support price in future.

Several ministers joined Pawar in asserting that the dole-out of food subsidy at a time when India's economy is already in doldrums is not a wise economic move. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee joined Pawar and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to suggest that the bill may be put on hold and that led to the prime minister deciding to better defer it and examine if it can be chiseled to meet the objections raised in the meeting.

Coming out of the cabinet meeting, food minister KV Thomas said: "The cabinet took up the bill, but discussion remained inconclusive. We are trying our best to introduce the Bill in this session." Asked if the draft Bill tabled by him in the cabinet will be modified, he quipped: "Yes, certainly."

Pawar's dissent note on the national food security bill points out that the government should certainly subsidise the poor to be labelled as "priority households" in the bill, but inclusion of the "general households" would create an abnormal situation impairing the open market prices and this will adversely affect the farmers. The Bill provides for coverage of 75 per cent rural population, including 46 per cent priority households, and 50 per cent in urban area, 28 per cent of them falling in the priority category.

Sources said Pawar has no dispute with the bill providing seven kilo of rice, wheat and coarse grain per head per month to the priority families at Rs 3, Rs 2 and Re 1 a kilo respectively, but giving the food grains at half the minimum support price (MSP) to others is not acceptable to him. The bill also provides for cash reimbursement if the government fails to provide subsidised foodgrains because of natural calamities such as drought and floods.

The draft bill envisages the government's food subsidy bill going up by Rs 95,000 crores, while Pawar's estimate is that it may go up to Rs 2,00,000 crores and it may become difficult for the government to procure 61 million tonnes of foodgrains year after year in giving the right to food to the people.

Under the present Public Distribution System (PDS), the government provides 35 kilo of wheat and rice per month to 6.52 crore BPL families at Rs 4.15 and Rs 5.65 per kilo respectively. About 11.5 crore APL (above poverty line) families get between 15 and 35 kilo of wheat and rice per month at Rs 6.10 and Rs 8.30 per kilo respectively.