Ghost buying plugged, 20% less paddy procured

Sushil Manav
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 3

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Even as neighbouring Punjab has witnessed a significant jump of nearly 25 per cent in procurement of paddy this year, Haryana claims to have plugged ghost purchases this time, registering a dip of nearly 20 per cent in its procurement this time.

Haryana ended its paddy procurement season with a purchase of 55.6 lakh MT of paddy against 64.71 lakh MT last year.

How it was done

Haryana plugged ghost purchase not only by checking truckloads of paddy coming from the other states, but also by stopping pushing of extra paddy by its own farmers in the name of increase in productivity per acre

“We have procured paddy of all farmers from our state who had uploaded details of their crop on the portal ‘Meri Fasal Mera Byora’. We have also procured paddy of farmers from the neighbouring states who maintained their accounts with arhtiyas in our state and had uploaded their crop details on the portal. But we have eliminated all ghost procurement which was prevalent during all these years,” said PK Das, Additional Chief Secretary (Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs), Haryana.

As for paddy from the neighbouring states that generally comes to Haryana, Das explained that paddy from Punjab came to Ambala, Kaithal and Fatehabad, while that from Uttar Pradesh came to Karnal.

Interestingly, Punjab recorded 133 per cent jump in procurement in Fazilka mandi this year. But paddy from there never comes to Haryana. “Fazilka (Punjab) and neighbouring Dabwali of Haryana are cotton belts. The state never receives paddy from those areas of Punjab,” Das said.

The ghost purchases used to be of two types. One, some unscrupulous traders used to buy paddy from other states like Bihar and push it in the procurement system to earn windfall profits, putting unnecessary burden on the state exchequer.

Two, some rice millers in connivance with government procurement agencies used to show more receipt of paddy for custom milling than actually received.

The millers would then make good the difference by pushing paddy or cheaper rice brought from Bihar or other states.

One MT of wheat brought from Bihar gives an unscrupulous dealer profit of Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000, said sources.

Haryana plugged ghost purchase not only by checking truckloads of paddy coming from the other states, but also by stopping pushing of extra paddy by its own farmers in the name of increase in productivity per acre.

Das explained that the crop cutting experiments (CCEs) conducted by the state Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Department every year to ascertain productivity per acre have found yield between 22 and 28 quintals per acre in various districts of the state.

However, the state government took the production as 30 quintals per acre with an additional permission of 3 quintal for the purpose of procurement since the details of crops uploaded by the farmers on the portal mentioned the number of acres under a particular crop.

There was dual checking for the truthfulness of information uploaded by the farmers through records of the Revenue Department and satellite imagery.