Rs 2.9K cr paid for ‘non-existent’ paddy

Sushil Manav
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, November 20

Year after year, Haryana has been ‘purchasing’ more paddy than its farmers actually produce in their fields, thanks to ‘bogus’ procurement by a cartel of rice millers, government procurement agencies and officials of agriculture marketing board.

While official procurement of paddy has yet to end in the state, government figures suggest 70.63 lakh MT of paddy has already been procured this year, out of which 63.81 lakh MT has been purchased by government agencies.

Since the government procures only non-basmati varieties, given to rice millers for custom milling of rice (CMR), the figures suggest 63.81 lakh MT of non-basmati paddy has been procured in Haryana so far.

In Haryana, 13 lakh hectare of land is under paddy crop cultivation — nearly 55 per cent of this is basmati and the rest is non-basmati.

Gurjeet Singh Mann, a farmer from Kirpal Patti village of Sirsa, says because of its water-guzzling ability, farmers in several districts, including Sirsa, have stopped growing non-basmati varieties completely and now these are largely grown in Karnal, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Ambala and Yamunanagar districts.

Agriculture experts say the average production of non-basmati varieties is 30 quintals per acre (among the best averages) or 75 quintal (7.5 MT) per hectare.

Even if it is assumed that half of the paddy land in Haryana is under cultivation of non-basmati varieties — though state agriculture and farmers’ welfare department officials say it is only 45 per cent of the total paddy land — the total production on 6.5 lakh hectares comes out to 48.75 lakh MT.

However, the agencies have already ‘procured’ 63.81 lakh MT of paddy, which is 15 lakh MT more than the state’s production.

In contrast, private purchase, which is normally of Basmati varieties, is only 6.82 lakh MT in the state this year. Given the fact that the government pays Rs 1,840 per quintal (Rs 18,400 per MT) as minimum support price for the paddy it purchases, this mean a sum of Rs 2,870 crore has been siphoned off from the state exchequer this year for ‘paddy’ which was never there.

Even last year, the government agencies had procured 58 lakh MT of paddy, while almost 47 lakh MT of non-basmati paddy was produced in the state by farmers that year.

After the issue cropped up at a meeting of Council of Ministers on Monday, the state authorities initiated a crackdown on millers and PSD rice was recovered from some mills in Karnal.

Pankaj Agarwal, Director General of the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs, Haryana, however said paddy from other states, too, kept coming to the state for procurement because of prompt payments and better facilities for farmers.