HCgives state 7 days to decide on plan offering maize, bajra

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 24

The Punjab and Haryana High Court today set a week’s deadline for the state government to make a decision regarding a scheme under which it wants to offer maize and bajra to people. In case the decision is not taken, the State Chief Secretary has been asked to be present in the court.

Taking up a PIL filed by Gurnam Singh and others against the Union of India and other respondents, the Division Bench of Justice Satish Kumar Mittal and Justice Harinder Singh Sidhu made it clear that the government had to decide whether it wished to distribute the coarse grain under the public distribution system and seek central assistance for paying subsidies. Alternatively, it had to decide whether it wanted to sell it in the open market and seek compensation for the difference between the higher minimum support price (MSP) and the lower market price, for which a separate scheme was to be formulated by the Union Department of Agriculture. The case will now come up for hearing on May 14.

The development is significant as according to counsel for the petitioner, JS Toor, 67 lakh quintal of maize was brought to the “mandis” last year, but only 31,000 quintal was lifted at the MSP. Farmers, in the process, had to suffer a loss of no less than Rs 200 crore.

As the case came up for resumed hearing, Assistant Solicitor-General of India Chetan Mittal told the court that senior officer from Punjab was not present during the meeting on procurement of coarse grain held on April 7 in accordance with the orders of the High Court.

It was required to indicate the details of areas proposed for procurement, expected quantity of procurement, market situation, number of purchase centres to be opened and details of arrangements for storage, transportation, packaging, quality control etc towards the central pool in consultation with the FCI.

The allocation plan to utilise procured quantity of coarse grain for the distribution under targeted the public distribution system in the state was also to be clearly proposed and the state government was required to obtain a prior approval for the proposed procurement plan by the Government of India.

The representative of Punjab stated that the state was aiming for diversification of cereal crops.