Crackdown on forcible sale of supplements with fertilisers in Ropar

The Ropar administration has ordered action against distributors forcibly selling supplements to farmers coming to purchase fertilisers for the rabi season.

Last week, an FIR was registered against a distributor of the IPL fertiliser company. The case was registered at the Ropar (City) police station acting on a complaint by Chief Agriculture Officer Gurmail Singh. Manpreet Singh of the “Soi Kheti Sewa Centre” was booked for allegedly forcing retailers to buy various products with fertilisers.

This is the first-ever such an FIR in the state.

AAP’s Ropar MLA Dinesh Chadha said for a long time, farmers were being exploited by distributors who compelled shopkeepers to sell overpriced and unnecessary booster products. In many cases, the cost of these supplements was even higher than fertilisers.

Farmers across the district are being forced to buy costly supplements “tagged” with essential fertilisers like urea and DAP. Fertiliser companies and their distributors are reportedly compelling both retailers and farmers to purchase additional products such as boosters and nutrient supplements, effectively doubling the cost of fertiliser procurement.

According to reports, fertiliser distributors have been tagging a range of supplementary products, including calcium nitrate, polyhalite, bio potash, MOP, sulphur and city compost, with the sale of urea and DAP fertilisers. This practice has pushed up the total expenditure for farmers who have no choice but to buy these packages if they want to purchase the fertilisers they need for their crops.

A bag of DAP, which officially costs Rs 1,350, is often accompanied by calcium nitrate priced at Rs 1,100 or polyhalite at Rs 900. Similarly, a urea bag priced at Rs 256 is being sold only when the buyer agrees to take along sulphur Rs 270 or nano urea Rs 250. In some cases, distributors are pushing other add-ons such as bio potash (Rs 600), MOP (Rs1,600), or city compost (Rs 300), driving up farmers’ expenses to nearly double the market rate.

Sources in the fertiliser industry said the forced bundling was a direct outcome of rising international prices of urea and DAP. India currently imports about 30 per cent of its urea requirement and nearly 100 per cent that of DAP from other countries. With the rabi sowing season underway, the global market prices have surged sharply, putting pressure on the Centre’s fertiliser subsidy budget.

The Centre provides around Rs 1,000 subsidy on each domestically produced urea bag, while the cost of imported fertilisers has also gone up substantially. To protect their profit margins, fertiliser companies are reportedly pushing their distributors to lift additional products such as bio-enhancers and soil supplements along with the heavily subsidised fertilisers that are in high demand among farmers.

These distributors, in turn, are transferring the burden to retailers, making it mandatory to purchase the full set of products if they wish to receive their fertiliser stock. Ultimately, this burden is passed down to farmers, who are left with no alternative but to pay inflated prices for essential fertilisers required for their crops.