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Centre confirms starvation
deaths in Rajasthan

"Our team has upheld the veracity of starvation deaths. However, making the report public would only politicise the issue needlessly. Hence, the matter therefore is being directly taken up with the Rajasthan government," official sources told PTI.

The team led by the Central Warehousing Corporation's Commercial Manager B B Pattanaik has been on a fact-finding and not a fault-finding mission and the Centre does not intend to politicise a human tragedy.

"The central team has concluded the deaths were due to improper running of ration shops, very low offtake under the PDS, deficiency in providing ration cards and few or no food-for-work programmes," sources added.

To describe the deaths as due to malnutrition, improper eating habits or stomach related diseases is only a case of semantics, they said.

The fact of the matter is that deaths took place due to lack of access to food, they said adding, in this case, if the Sahariyas tribals were compelled to eat grass seeds leading to diseases, which proved fatal, it boils down to 'starvation'.

Yadav has sent a missive to the Rajasthan government to take requisite steps to ensure that the Sahariyas tribals have better access to the PDS, they said.

More reports from Rajasthan

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