Kerala High Court: Lamented Govt’s Failure to Disburse Paddy Procurement Dues To Farmers Despite Its Orders

The Kerala High Court in the case K Sivanandhan V State of Kerala and other matters observed and expressed regret over the State’s government failure to clear paddy procurement dues to farmers, despite the repeated orders.
The bench headed by Justice Justice Raja Vijayaraghavan V in the case obserevd and stated that the failure of the respondent to pay the amounts due to the farmers despite the orders passed by the said Court cannot be countenanced. Thus, it has been submitted by the learned Government Pleader that all the measures shall be taken to pay the amounts due and he shall come up with positive inputs on September 11, 2023 as regards the time frame.
In the present case, the court was the hearing the batch of writ plea moved aggrieved farmers who sold their paddy to the Government of Kerala through Supplyco but have not received any payment in return. Therefore, Supplyco has been authorized by the State Government to act as the implementation agency for the Decentralized Paddy Procurement, the Processing, and the Marketing Scheme of the Government of India.
The counsel appearing for the petitioner informed the court that many of them have borrowed money for paddy cultivation and are under financial liabilities and most of them have no other income, other than the income from the agricultural activities.
The High Court in the case observed and has noted that despite of several opportunities no amounts were disburse by the respondents to the farmers. The court passed an interim order wherein the court directed the Supplyco and the government to disburse the amounts due to the farmers within a week. The counsel appearing for the Supplyco made the statement in Court that some of the payments have already been made and the rest of the remaining dues will be cleared within a week. Thus, an amount of Rs.50,000/- has been paid to certain individual farmers.
The counsels, Advocate Millu Dandapani, Advocate Legith T Kottakkal, Advocate P.R.Banerji, Advocate Binoy Vasudevan, Advocate Sreejith Sreenath, Advocate S.Ranjit, Gokul Das V.V.H., Advocate T.K.Sandeep , Advocate Veena Harikumar and Advocate Swetha R. represented the petitioner.