Farmers Movement Archive

Govt drafts plan for agricultural market in Tikri village, sets 2023 target

The state government has drafted a plan to set up an agricultural produce market in northwest Delhi’s Tikri village, equipped with a cold storage facility, an 8 MW solar generation plant, a pneumatic waste disposal system and a parking facility for 1,500 trucks, a senior government official said. The new market would help decongest Azadpur, the biggest agricultural produce market in Delhi, which receives around 5,000 trucks of fruits and vegetables per day that leads to severe traffic snarls in and around the market. The site for the new market, which has been pending for long, is located on the north-western periphery of Delhi, around 19 kilometres from Azadpur. The market will be located along the National Highway-1 and spread over an area of 70.62 acres. “Like Azadpur, the new market in Tikri too will deal with fruits and vegetables. It is expected to be ready by early-2023. The government plans to name it Nutri-Mall of Delhi,” the official. The senior official said that the project will have a built-up area of 2.75 million square feet, of which 1.8 million square feet has been allocated for a wholesale market, 0.7 million square feet to a retail market and 0.25 million square feet to cold storage and other facilities. “It will be Delhi’s first modern mandi (market). The new mandi is being planned by a group of experts, keeping in mind the best utilisation of space,” said Adil Khan, the chairperson of the agricultural produce market committee (APMC) in Azadpur, who is also a member of a committee supervising work related to the new market in Tikri. Mandi is a colloquial term for agricultural produce markets. Anil Malhotra, a wholesale trader based in Azadpur and a member of the APMC, said, “Space is a major problem in Azadpur. The new market will be a big relief. The land for the new market was procured by the Azadpur APMC more than 20 years ago and the government’s plan to construct a new market has missed several deadlines.” While presenting the budget in 2017, Delhi finance minister and deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had said that the work to set up a new market in Tikri will be completed by 2019. Senior government officials attributed the delay to hassles concerning permits from multiple agencies which, they said, have been settled now. “The delay, however, has given the government more time for better planning,” said the senior government official quoted above. Delhi currently has two mandis for grains, at Narela and Najafgarh, and four mandis for fruits and vegetables, at Azadpur, Ghazipur, Okhla and Keshopur, which are authorised by the government and managed by separate boards and committees. With only 800 hectares of agricultural land, Delhi is largely dependent on agricultural produce from other states. The mandis in Delhi broadly serve two purposes — first, they act as the lifeline for the supply of fruits, vegetables and food grains and second, they act as transit points for supply between states.

Hindustan Times

21-12-2020

Delhi