Now it’s the paddy in Haryana and demand for sops

CHANDIGARH, OCTOBER 21: After Punjab, it's the turn of Haryana. Grain analysis done by a Central team has revealed that almost half the sa...

CHANDIGARH, OCTOBER 21: After Punjab, it’s the turn of Haryana. Grain analysis done by a Central team has revealed that almost half the samples collected from Haryana suffer from identical infirmities of discoloration and fungal damage.

While in the case of Punjab, tests done by the Central Grain Analysis Laboratory at Krishi Bhavan showed that an overwhelming 95 per cent of the 42 paddy samples failed to meet Central specifications, in the case of Haryana, 50 per cent of the 22 samples failed the test.

Under pressure from the Punjab government, last week the Centre decided to revise the 3 per cent acceptance level of damaged paddy to 8 per cent for the state and is now facing pressure from Haryana. A team from the state is camping in New Delhi. The specification of 3 per cent, which applies to the entire country, has been relaxed on rare occasions, like after the super cyclone in Orisaa last year.

Story continues below this ad

The analysis report for Haryana is likely to be presented to Food Minister Shanta Kumar early next week. Forty one per cent of the paddy was found to have a damage content of over 8 per cent and, therefore, cannot be procured by the Central agencies, including the Food Corporation of India, even if Government relaxes the norm for Haryana too.

In the case of Punjab, laboratory tests had revealed that more than 45 per cent of the paddy samples had failed to meet even the relaxed 8 per cent specification test.

According to Joint Secretary K M Sahni, who had headed the inspection committee which collected the samples from Punjab earlier this month, “the concessions given to Punjab could have a cascading effect in other states though still we have only Haryana’s request.”

FCI Chairman Bhure Lal is known to have vehemently opposed the Punjab package and the Rs 350-crore additional subsidy for farmers in a letter to Food Secretary P Shankar earlier this week. Bhure Lal is said to have expressed his desire to be transferred out from the FCI and argued that the sops would benefit only the commission agents and millers and not the farmers.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More