Telangana BJP President Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Wednesday hailed the announcement of Union Minister for Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal to restart the rice procurement process and criticised the State government for the impasse on this issue earlier.
"It is the adamant and irresponsible attitude of the state government which has led to rice stocks piling up in the mills as it has stopped distributing the rice to the beneficiaries under the PM Garib Kaylan Anna Yojana Scheme free," he charged in a statement.
The Centre has decided to begin the procurement process once again in the large interest of the Telangana people despite the recalcitrant attitude of the government, he claimed.
Earlier, party sources said that the procurement was halted because the State government had failed to rein in the rice millers despite the Central teams pointing out deficiencies in taking up physical verification due to shortage of bags to the extent of 4.54 lakh bags in 40 mills in March 31 and again on May 21, a shortage of 1.38 lakh bags was noticed in 63 mills.
Paddy was not stored in a “countable position” in 593 mills due to which the “physical verification of paddy stocks could not be completed”. The State government had failed to act on its own assurance of the Commissioner of Civil Supplies to ensure the stocks are kept in a “countable position along with proper book-keeping”, they claimed.
The government had also not yet distributed the 1.90 lakh metric tonnes of rice after taking it from the central pool thus depriving benefits to the beneficiaries and these issues had forced the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to halt the procurement, they added.
