Govt’s discount sale of tomatoes starts in major cities; one person can buy only 2 kgs

Karam Prakash

New Delhi, July 14

Amid continuously rising prices of tomatoes over the past few weeks, the Union Government on Friday started selling it at a discounted rate in major cities to control the retail price of the staple vegetable.Since last few weeks, the retail price of tomatoes has risen sharply and was ruling as high as Rs 244 per kg on Friday in several parts of the country owing to the lean season plus heavy rains.

The Union Government is, however, selling tomatoes at Rs 90 per kg. However, one person would be allowed to buy only two kilograms.

In Delhi, theNational Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India(NCCF) started the sale on Friday in all 11 districts through 20 mobile vans and five stalls. BesidesDelhi and NCR region, NCCF is planning to start distribution of tomatoes at discounted rates at selected locations in Uttar Pradesh: Kanpur, Lucknow and Varanasi in a day or two.Insiders say that the distribution of tomatoes through mobile vans is likely to be started, by Sunday, at Jaipur in Rajasthan, also.

Notably, Union Government, on Wednesday, had directed National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) and National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) to immediately procuretomatoesfrom the old stocks in Mandis of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra.

“Due to ongoing flash floods and reported damage to crops in the plains of Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab the regular supply of tomatoes to Delhi may stay disrupted for a while,” said a senior NCCF official.

However, because of the incessant rains,over the past threedays,Delhi is on extreme flood alert.Therefore, NCCFofficialsmay not be able to reach the heavily inundated streets and low-lying areas like ISBT Kashmere Gate, Sonia Vihar, Mukherjee Nagar, etc., if the flood continues.

“As soon as the situation improves and normal traffic is restored the distribution network would be improved and expanded and more vans will be deployed,” theofficial added.

It has been learned that NCCF is also in the process of tying up with organisations with well-established retail outlets like Mother Dairy, and Kendriya Bhandara so that the outreach can be extensive and purchasing tomatoes would be easy for the consumers.