On a day when Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, along with his entire cabinet, party MPs and MLAs, staged a symbolic dharna in support of an integrated national policy for paddy procurement, the Centre said it had told the state last year that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) will not procure parboiled rice in future. The Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution said, “It was decided in the meeting held on August 17, 2021, that no parboiled rice will be accepted in the Central pool for kharif marketing season (KMS) 2021-22 from any state due to high stock level. However, states can procure parboiled rice for their own consumption.” 🗞️ Subscribe Now: Get Express Premium to access the best Election reporting and analysis 🗞️ The ministry said that as a “special case” in KMS 2020-21, Telangana was permitted to procure 44.75 LMT of parboiled rice, and the state government had submitted through a letter dated October 4, 2021, that “no par-boiled rice to be delivered by the Telangana government to the FCI in future”. It was only after the letter that Union Food Minister Piyush Goyal reportedly wrote to Telangana chief minister, informing him that no parboiled rice will be procured by the FCI in future. The Centre also highlighted that the demand for the parboiled rice was much lower than the supply. Sharing the details of the par-boiled rice stock with the FCI, Food Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said “40 LMT is the current stock of (parboiled rice), which is sufficient for two years, and its shelf life is one-and-a-half years”. “The annual consumption of parboiled rice is 20-lakh metric tonnes, what will we do by procuring more than that. Public money will be wasted,” said Pandey, responding to a query at a press conference. The Food Ministry data shows that out of 40.58 LMT parboiled rice stock available as on April 1, 2022, 16.52 LMT is in Telangana, followed by Tamil Nadu (12.09 LMT) and Kerala (3 LMT). The parboiled rice stock stood in the range of 0.04 LMT to 2.92 LMT in 10 other states. The ministry said that in the last few years, the production in the parboiled consuming states like Jharkhand, Kerala and Tamil Nadu has increased, resulting in lesser movement of the said category rice to the deficit states. Telangana is under the DCP (Decentralised Procurement) system, wherein “the state government/ its agencies procure, store and distribute” (against government of India’s allocation for TPDS & OWS etc.) rice within the state and the “excess stocks” (rice) procured by the state/its agencies are handed over to the FCI in Central pool. According to the FCI data, a quantity of 94.53-lakh metric tonnes of rice was procured from Telangana for the Central pool during KMS 2020-21. In the ongoing KMS 2021-22, a quantity of 46 LMT of rice has been procured in the state till April 4. In fact, the procurement of rice has been much higher than the total production of rice in Telangana during the last two years. In KMS 2020-21, 94.54 LMT rice was procured in Telangana even as total rice production was 77 LMT. In KMS 2019-20 also, the procurement figure was 74.54 LMT, which was higher than the production (74.28 LMT) in the state.
