Struggling to implement the Anna Bhagya scheme, a key pre-poll promise of the Congress, over unavailability of the required amount of grains, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday landed in Delhi where he is scheduled to call on President Droupadi Murmu and also meet Home minister Amit Shah.

The Congress government has granted in-principle approval for the implementation of the Anna Bhagya scheme, which offers to provide 10 kg of rice every month to BPL families in the state. However, the scheme ran into trouble after the Food Corporation of India stopped the sale of rice to state governments on June 12.

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Karnataka’s Food and Civil Supplies minister KH Muniyappa is also in Delhi and is expected to meet Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal, to urge the central govenrment to resume the sail of food grains to states through the FCI.

The Congress government in Karnataka has blamed the BJP-ruled Centre for blocking the implementation of its poll promise. On June 15, CM Siddaramaiah took aim at the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, accusing them of trying to “snatch the food away from poor people”.

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The Modi government, he claimed, had written to the FCI to stop the sale of rice to states under the Open Market Sale Scheme in a desperate attempt to create problems for the implementation of Anna Bhagya 2.0.

“BJP is always anti-Karnataka and we have been saying this since 2014. Narendra Modi’s step-motherly treatment towards Karnataka has caused Kannadigas a great trouble since 2014,” he had then said.

As per estimates, the state requires 2.28 lakh metric tonnes of rice per month for the scheme, but has been able to secure a supply of only 1.5 lakh metric tonnes for a month from Chhattisgarh till now.

The issue snowballed into a major controversy with the Congress accusing the BJP of blocking the implementation of the scheme while the BJP launched major protests demanding the implementation of all poll guarantees and not indulge in blamegame and delay tactics.