Farmers Movement Archive

e-PoP machines to nix fixers at wheat procurement units

Lucknow: To get rid of middlemen, the Yogi Adityanath government has decided to use electronic point of purchase (e-PoP) machines during the mammoth wheat procurement exercise scheduled to start from Thursday. Under the arrangement, farmers will be required to register on the portal of the food and civil supplies department: www.fcs.up.gov.in. Food commissioner Manish Chauhan said e-PoP machines have been made available by vendors. “This will ensure transparency in purchase of wheat as only registered farmers will be able to sell their produce at the purchase centre after biometric authentication,” he told TOI. Farmers will be compensated through Public Financial Management System, a central plan monitoring system of the finance ministry. It is used as a platform for e-payment of direct benefits transfer (DBT)/non-DBT payments for both Aadhaar and non-Aadhaar-linked accounts. The UP government’s measures to check the involvement of middlemen in the wheat procurement process come amid a prolonged farmers’ stir against the new farm laws. The development also comes close on heels of the state government scaling up the minimum support price for wheat from Rs 1,925 in 2020-21 to Rs 1,975 in 2021-22, besides increasing the number of procurement centres from 5,000 last year to 6,000 this time. Earlier, the department of civil supplies had used e-point of sale (e-POS) machines for selling ration through 80,000 public distribution system (PDS) shops. The move had helped the state government weed out 25 lakh ghost ration cards. The UP government had taken the step even as it embarked on the Centre’s flagship PM Gareeb Kalyan Anna Yojana that envisages free foodgrain distribution among the needy, particularly migrants who returned to the state during the lockdown. In fact, UP had produced 3.75 crore metric tonnes of wheat in 2020-21. Against this, the state government managed to procure 35 lakh metric tonnes, benefitting a little over 6.6 lakh farmers. This was less than the 37 lakh metric tonnes of wheat procured in 2019-20 when more than 7.5 lakh farmers were benefited. Officials said the dip in wheat purchase was due to the aftermath of the pandemic-induced lockdown which affected movement of farmers.

The Times of India

2021-04-01

Lucknow