With FIRs against multiple agencies, Nafed cracks the whip on onion procurement

According to Nafed, the federations had shown that onions were procured on paper, but in reality, no procurement was done. Extensive paper trails were created to show that onion was procured and disposed of, but no such business had occurred, the official said. Some of the federations had sold off the buffer stock of onion in the open market and failed to deliver the produce when asked, the official added.

In 2024, the Centre asked Nafed and the National Cooperative Consumers Federation (NCCF) to procure around 5 lakh tonnes of onion to form a buffer stock to help the government offload the same when domestic prices rose. During the kharif season from October to November last year, Nafed procured over 2.5 lakh tonnes of onions, and the NCCF, around 1.5 lakh tonnes.

However, according to Nafed officials, during scrutiny of the procurement, they detected several lapses in the working of the scheme. Nafed saw a shortfall of around 2,000 tonnes while NCCF’s shortfall was reportedly higher.

The irregularities were detected largely because Nafed implemented several measures like portal-based registration, increased recovery percentage insisting on geo-tagging of the stock and usage of GPS-enabled vehicles from 2022. “This helped us create the necessary documentation,” the official said.

Nafed is now checking the workings of other federations to see if any wrongdoings occurred there, the official added.