More people are seeking meals in the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens, leading some elected officials to suggest that more New Yorkers are going hungry.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat representing parts of Queens and Brooklyn, released a report yesterday citing an 8% rise in meals served over a four-month period from 2004 to 2005. The finding, he said, indicates a “major failing” on the part of government.

“There are, quite simply put, more people who are hungry in this city, more people turning to soup kitchens, and more people turning to food pantries for meals,” Mr. Weiner said, standing with anti-hunger advocates in front the New York City Rescue Mission in Lower Manhattan.

A spokesman for the city’s Human Resources Administration, Robert McHugh, disputed Mr. Weiner’s interpretation of the figures as reflecting a rise in hunger, saying the city saw them “in a more positive light.”

“The city’s public and private sectors are there to meet the people’s needs,” Mr. McHugh said.

Mr. Weiner, who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for mayor last year, also criticized the Bloomberg administration for making it too difficult for eligible New Yorkers to apply for food stamps. Nearly 1.1 million New Yorkers now receive food stamps, an increase of more than 200,000 from 2000, according to the most recent data from the Human Resources Administration. But Mr. Weiner said more than 600,000 eligible residents are not enrolled in the program, for which the city could receive an estimated $739 million in federal funding for food stamps.

Anti-hunger advocates blamed the disparity on a dense bureaucracy that they said could easily be fixed.

“I don’t think there’s anybody who knows this situation who will not agree that there is a bureaucracy that is feeding hungry New Yorkers red tape in this city today,” a Democratic City Council member of Queens, Eric Gioia, said.

A frequent critic of the city’s food stamp program, Mr. Gioia said yesterday he would press for evidence that the city was enforcing a series of bills enacted over a mayoral veto last summer that make it easier to apply for the food stamps.

The laws require that food stamp applications be available at food pantries and soup kitchens, and that people can submit them online or by fax.

Mr. McHugh defended the city’s record, saying the Bloomberg administration had made “historic progress in reducing hunger in New York City.” He cited the increase in New Yorkers receiving food stamps and said a large number of those had left the welfare rolls. The city had also extended the hours of food stamp offices, and shortened the application.

Mr. Gioia “chooses to see the glass half empty,” Mr. McHugh said. “We choose to see it as more than half-full.”

The city will soon appoint an anti-hunger task force to look at ways to further address the problem, Mr. McHugh said. “If there are ways to do things better, we want to know about it,” he said.

Mr. Weiner plans to introduce federal legislation next month aimed at the food stamp application process. The bill’s most significant provision is likely to be a ban on requiring food stamp applicants to be fingerprinted, which he said “virtually criminalizes the process.” Advocates of fingerprinting, however, say the requirement has been proven to reduce fraud. New York is one of four states that mandate its use.