Apples are dearer by 20-30% this season. The reason: the J&K Govt’s decision to revoke the order to transfer 99 acres of land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, reports Chetan Chauhan.
Apples are dearer by 20-30 per cent this season. The reason: the Jammu and Kashmir government’s decision to revoke the order to transfer 99 acres of land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. And the incidents that followed it.
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Apples from Kashmir start pouring in Delhi markets from the first week of August. But during the first 15 days of this month, only 124 apple-laden trucks arrived at Azadpur market, while 840 trucks came from Kashmir by this time last year. On Monday, the number of trucks dwindled to only 10.
General secretary of Delhi Fruit Merchant Association M.R. Kriplani, said in the first week of August, the wholesale prices of apples from Himachal Pradesh crash with the Valley arrivals. But this year, the prices have risen.
“The wholesale prices of apples jumped by 20-30 per cent because of the situation in Kashmir and lower production in Himachal due to rains,” said Balkrishan Jaggi, a fruit merchant at the Azadpur market.
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A 20-kg apple box that sold for Rs 700 in July-end fetched between Rs 850 and Rs 900 last week.
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A 20-kg apple box that sold for Rs 700 in July-end fetched between Rs 850 and Rs 900 last week.
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“We are getting more for our produce. Prices have risen in all the markets in northern India,” said Sanjay Chauhan, general secretary of Himachal Fruit Growers Association.
Apples from Sapore, Baramulla and the Valley account for 60 per cent of the annual crop, while the rest is from Himachal and Uttrakahand.
Apples from Kashmir earn foreign revenue worth Rs 50 crore through exports.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
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