hyderabad
Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy said that there was no urea scarcity in the State and stern action would be initiated against any trader or dealer in case they try to create artificial scarcity.
At a review meeting held here on Saturday, he said that the Centre had allotted 9.14 lakh tonnes of urea for Kharif (Vanakalam) season and out of it, 7.78 lakh tonnes had been supplied already. He explained that there was a carry-over stock of 2.15 lakh tonnes as of March 31 this year, and together with the fertilizer supplied so far this year, the availability so far was 9.93 lakh tonnes.
As on Saturday, the urea stock available in the State is 2.5 lakh tonnes and it should be sufficient for the agricultural operations for the season as the extent of Kharif was likely to come down by about 10 lakh acres due to delayed monsoon rains and lack of sufficient water for irrigation in the Krishna Basin projects.
About 16,615 authorised fertilizer dealers and 908 primary agricultural cooperative credit societies (PACS) were selling or supplying urea to farmers and artificial scarcity was created only in four PACS in combined Nalgonda district. The talk of urea scarcity was not only wrong but irresponsible too, the Minister noted.
