No lessees for Fatehpur grain market yard

Rajiv Mahajan

Nurpur, July 7

The regulated vegetable and grain marketing yard built by the state Agriculture Department in Fatehpur, under the government of Virbhadra Singh, has become a white elephant as almost all shops have been lying vacant for the past two years. The government had spent Rs 387 lakh on the yard, which seem to have gone down drain.

The shops and godowns built in the yard have failed to attract unemployed youth of the area to take them on lease. The high monthly rent and lack of facilities have kept the entrepreneurs away from this yard. The yard was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister, Virbhadra Singh, on January 14, 2017. The present government has failed to take any steps to make it operational. Initially, the yard had become functional in September 2017, when all shops were rented out. However, due to high monthly rent, all lessees left them.

The yard has eight vegetable shops to run wholesale sabzi mandi and 10 godowns of grain market. Only two vegetable shops with Rs 2,500 monthly rent and two grain market godowns have been leased out at Rs 10,000 per month. Most of the shops and godowns are locked for want of lessees.

The vegetable growers of the area prefer to sell their produce door-to-door, after 1 per cent market committee fees for selling vegetables and fruits outside sabzi mandis was exempted in 2014.

The Agriculture Department, which has to run this yard through the State Agriculture Marketing Board (SAMB), has failed to provide any facility in the yard to attract entrepreneurs. Jeet Sharma, president, Fatehpur block Congress, criticised the state for neglecting the pro-farmer project and demanded to take the requisite steps to make it functional.

Raj Kumar Bhardwaj, secretary, Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC), Kangra, said a proposal for reducing the rent of the shops and providing cold storage facility in the yard had been submitted to the SAMB.

Sanjay Upadhaya, the lone director of the SAMB from Kangra, said the state government had spent lakhs of rupees on the construction of the yard, and he had raised the proposal of reducing the exorbitant monthly rent during the meeting of the SAMB for making it functional.