E-Paper
Conduct physical verification of paddy stock at mills, FCI tells Haryana
Mukul Kumar, director, food, civil supplies and consumer affairs department, Haryana, said it has been decided that physical verification of paddy stock at rice mills will be conducted in collaboration with FCI.
Amid the reports of anomalies in paddy procurement, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has directed the Haryana government to conduct the physical verification of the paddy stock at rice mills.
As per the FCI, the decision was taken following the recent newspaper reports that bogus procurement was going on in some of the mandis and also fudging the figures of non-basmati produce and trying to increase the same in place of the basmati variety.
“It was decided to make physical verification of paddy mandatory by state and FCI officials in order to curtail any bogus procurement operations under the central pool,” reads the statement.
Even it was proposed to integrate electricity meter readings of mills with CMR delivery to cross-check the actual milling to ensure that there won’t be any room for unethical practices. Moreover, the FCI has also developed a chemical testing mechanism where the age of stocks can be ascertained with different colour coding to check recycled rice. As per the directions, the physical verification will be conducted before the commencement of delivery of custom-milled rice so that there will be more vigilance in operations.
The FCI has already taken up this issue with the state government during a meeting held under the chairmanship of the Haryana chief secretary. It was proposed to conduct paddy physical verification of each mill in the presence of FCI officials.
Also, the FCI has made an appeal to rice millers and agents to adopt the genuine milling practice and not to involve any unethical and unfair practices to avoid any stringent actions and legal complications. The area under cultivation for paddy in Haryana is 13.19 lakh hectares and the expected procurement for paddy in the central pool is 55 LMT. But the FCI officials are of the view that there is a high arrival of paddy compared to last year’s procurement in some of the districts like Karnal, Kurukshetra, Kaithal, Ambala and Yamunanagar where paddy arrival has already reached estimated targets for the entire season.
As per the procurement figures, different procurement agencies in the state have already procured 38.48 lakh MT paddy by October 17 against 26.73 lakh MT procured till the same date last year. Also, the per day arrival of paddy in the mandis of the state was still above 3 lakh MT. The chief minister’s flying squad had already exposed anomalies of over 75,000 quintals in the stock of several rice mills in Karnal district.
Mukul Kumar, director, food, civil supplies and consumer affairs department, Haryana, said it has been decided that the physical verification of the paddy stock at the rice mills will be conducted in collaboration with the FCI.
