Enough oil for festivals: Govt

The domestic demand of edible oils has been pegged at 78 lakh tonnes. Indigenous production was 63 lakh tonnes and the shortfall of 15 lakh tonnes is being met by imports. According to I R Mehra, Executive Director, Indian Vanaspati Producer’s Association, thegovernment has undertaken the import of 56,000 mt of palmolein at the cost of US $40 million. “Though the government has begun taking steps to normalise the situation, it must ensure that the mustard crop is sown well. If the crop fails, the edible oil shortage could go up from 1.5 million tonnes at present to 2 million tonnes,” he added.

Meanwhile, an official release said that adequate packaging capacity is available in the country for packing edible oils for sale in retail as per the Edible Oil Packaging Regulation Order 1998. Packaging machinery manufacturers assured the government recently that they have the capacity to manufacture about 200 form-fill-seal (FFS) machines per month for 50 ml to 1 litre pouches.

There is adequate supply of flexible packaging material indigenously available.

The cost of packing per litre of oil in pouches works out to be lower than the cost based on the use of larger tins for storing oil sold in loose form, the release said. Further, the cost of 500 ml pouch packingis only 82 paise for three layer pouch as against Rs 1.44 for 15 kg container packs which the consumer will have to pay for buying loose oil without availing of packaging benefit.

The government has decided to nominate the Indian Institute of Packaging, Mumbai, as the nodal agency to provide all technological help in encouraging the use of packaging for edible oils.

Delhi High Court pulls up CBI for "tardy" probe

NEW DELHI, Sept 26: The Delhi High Court yesterday pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for what it called the tardy progress in investigating the source of the mustard oil adulteration, the consumption of which resulted in the dropsy epidemic and the subsequent death of 60 persons in the Capital recently.

Declining bail to the mustard oil dealer Kamal Aggarwal, who was arrested by the Delhi Police on August 28 in the adulteration case, Justice D K Jain also directed the CBI to produce the laboratory test report of the samples, collected from Aggarwal’s factory on August28 and inform it on October 5 (the next date of hearing) “whether oil can be extracted from `argemone’ seeds and if so whether it is sold in open market.”

The CBI counsel failed to satisfactorily tell the court whether argemone, which leads to the dropsy disease, was available in the market and how far it had progressed in the investigation.

The CBI probe in the case began on September 7 after scores of people died of dropsy and over 2,000 people were admitted to various hospitals in the city.

The court was hearing the bail plea of Aggarwal who moved against a sessions court order rejecting his bail plea on the ground that the nature of the offence was serious and that investigations were at an initial stage.