The Centre has asked the State government to address lapses in rice procurement by the former for remedial action that would enable resumption of custom milling of rice at mills which was stopped since July 7.
About 93 lakh tonnes of foodgrains and rice are lying idle at 3,300 small and big mills after the Centre suspended custom milling as the State government did not undertake distribution of Prime Minister’s Garib Kalyn Anna Yojana of distribution of free rice to poor to overcome the impact of COVID in April and May this year. This was after the State government had lifted its quota of 1.90 lakh tonnes of free rice for the two months.
The Ministry of Food and Public Distribution System on Wednesday said it had also stopped custom milling due to certain lapses in physical verification of stocks at the mills in March and May.
The lapses related to shortage of 4.53 lakh bags of rice noticed at 40 mills during the verification on March 31. Again in May, another 1.37 lakh bags were missing at 63 mills. They were related to produce of kharif in 2020-21 and 2021-22. At 503 mills, the paddy was not stored in countable position due to which the physical verification could not be completed.
The Civil Supplies Commissioner of the State government had assured that the stocks would be kept in a countable position along with proper book keeping and observing standard operating procedure. To date, however, no concrete action had been taken by the government against defaulting mills .
The release added that in view of consistent inaction of the State government to act on its assurances, the Food Corporation of India had communicated to it that there would be no further rice receipts from the State for national pool till further orders. Therefore, the State government was again requested to address these issues immediately and furnish concrete action taken report for further proceedings by the FCI.
The refusal of Centre to resume custom milling in the last two weeks had resulted in germination of paddy stocks at rice mills beside loss of work for labourers. Many of the rice mills were also shut down. A delegation of the rice millers association left for New Delhi on Tuesday to plead to resume milling. Union Minister Piyush Goyal had assured BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar that the matter would be settled amicably. At the same time, the State government contemplated e-tendering of stocks at less than minimum support price if the Centre did not relent. It was in touch with experts to fix the upset price for the tenders.
