Foodgrain scam: Cong, AAP seek court-monitored audit

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 15

With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) finding food stocks worth Rs 12,000 crore missing from Punjab’s godowns, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today demanded a court-monitored audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) into the procurement of foodgrains.

Raising the issue on the eve of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Punjab, Randeep Surjewala, in-charge of the communication cell of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), and Vijay Inder Singla, national spokesman of the AICC, sought an assurance from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the farmers of the state would not be allowed to suffer on account of delay or non-payment against the crop purchase in the wake of the RBI alert.

The Congress leaders linked the foodgrain scam to the findings of the CAG report for 2013-14. Quoting the report, Surjewala said while verifying trucks used to transport paddy in Punjab, it was found that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and the agencies — Punjab State Warehousing Corporation, Punjab Agro Food Corporation, Pungrain (Punjab Grain Procurement Corporation) and Punsup (Punjab State Civil Supplies Corporation — hired 3,319 vehicles to transport paddy to FCI godowns, but CAG could verify only 87 of these vehicles, of which 15 were two-wheelers.

“There cannot be worse news for a state which is the food bowl of India, providing 114 lakh tonnes of wheat annually to the central pool. It puts a question mark on the capacity of the Akali-BJP government to procure the current wheat crop,” he said.

Meanwhile, AAP national spokesman Sanjay Singh said the Parkash Singh Badal government must come clean on how the food stocks were siphoned off, while demanding a probe by a sitting Supreme Court judge.

Sanjay Singh said the probe should also go into the role of the Badal government, the BJP-led Central Government and the banks, which were all aware of the missing food stocks but made no effort to resolve the issue.

Party MP Bhagwant Mann said, “Our biggest worry is that if the Badal government has failed to repay the loan taken from banks to purchase the missing stock, how will it pay the farmers for their wheat crop whose procurement has already begun?”

Capt seeks state govt’s dismissal

Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt Amarinder Singh said on Friday that revelations made by a leading financial daily about the massive food scandal in the state might just be the tip of the iceberg