Farmers Movement Archive

Haryana stops wheat procurement operations

After procuring around 81 lakh MT wheat, government procurement agencies in Haryana have stopped the procurement operations in all 394 mandis in state.As per government, 83.49 lakh MT wheat arrived in the mandis in state and government procurement agencies have procured 80.77 lakh MT wheat.However, there were reports that payments of farmers are pending.Expecting a bumper produce this year, the government had increased procurement target to 80 lakh MT against 74 lakh MT of last year.But the government figures revealed that around 83.50 lakh MT wheat arrived in mandis and around 2.72 lakh MT is still lying unprocured.The procurement operations were stopped on April 30 but the government could not disburse payments of all farmers as only ₹12,977 crore has been paid to farmers and payments of around ₹3,000 crore are still pending. Most pending payments belong to farmers of Uttar Pradesh.Additional chief secretary (food, civil supplies and consumer affairs department) Anurag Rastogi had said that the target of procuring 80 lakh MT wheat was fixed by the Union government but the actual procurement can be less or more than the target.On whether government has any plans to procure more wheat from Haryana as crop is still arriving in mandis and procurement has exceeded the target, he had said that the target does not change.Ground-level mandi officials said that there are no instructions to resume procurement operations so far.On the other hand, farm union leaders and arhtiyas are demanding that government should resume procurement operations to ensure that entire wheat arrived in the mandis can be procured in MSP of ₹1,975 per quintal.As per officials of the food and supplies department, arrival of wheat in some grain markets has reached beyond expectations. In Karnal grain market, around 15 lakh quintal wheat has arrived against 12.40 lakh quintal of last year.Rajnish Chaudhry, president of the association of commission agents in Karnal grain market, said that over 50,000 quintal wheat was of hundreds of farmers not procured by government and they are waiting for government orders so that wheat of all registered farmers can be procured.Haryana BKU president Gurnam Singh Charuni has threatened to hold protests in mandis if the government does not resume procurement in mandis.

Hindustan Times

10-05-2021

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