Plans afoot to procure rabi paddy from April 1

The State Government is preparing an action plan to procure over 77 lakh tonnes of paddy to be produced this rabi (yasangi) season, procurement of which is likely to begin from April 1.

A Cabinet Sub-Committee meeting on the paddy procurement during the rabi season was conducted here on Monday by Ministers S. Niranjan Reddy (Agriculture), G. Kamalakar (Civil Supplies) and E. Rajender (Medical and Health) and Chairman of the Civil Supplies Corporation M. Srinivas Reddy besides officials of the Agriculture, Civil Supplies and Marketing Departments.

The ministers instructed the officials concerned to focus on setting up procurement centres, gunny bags, arrangement of storage space, transport from procurement centres to godowns, weighing machines and others. When the ministers pointed out that there were large-scale complaints on the quality of paddy procured during the kharif season, officials explained that it was due to movement of produce directly from fields to the procurement centres immediately after harvesting through machines.

They told the Marketing Department officials to measure the moisture content measuring instruments, paddy cleaners, winnowing machines, tarpaulin sheets and other necessary material at all the procurement centres to overcome the quality problems faced during the kharif procurement. They could be procured by availing the market fee being paid by the Civil Supplies Corporation for paddy procrement.

Stating that the production of paddy during the rabi season was estimated to be about 77.73 lakh tonnes, the ministers said the extent of paddy cultivation had gone up sharply this season due to the pro-farmers measures taken up by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao including availability of water for irrigation through Kaleshwaram project. The ministers said the Civil Supplies Department had procured 37 lakh tonnes of paddy during the last rabi season.

On the storage space required for the procured paddy, the minister suggested the Civil Supplies officials to coordinate with State Warehousing Corporation, Central Warehousing Corporation, Food Corporation of India and Marketing Department and also to bring into use the unused (empty) godowns. The meeting also discussed about the additional milling charges being demanded by the Rice Millers Association.

Further, the ministers wanted the officials to check arrival of paddy stocks from the neighbouring States such as Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh since the procurement of paddy at the minimum support price was limited there.