CM urges Centre to help Punjab in hassle-free procurement for Kharif season

Cash Credit Limit (CCL) for the Kharif Marketing Season (KMS), 2021-22 from Reserve Bank of India (RBI) expeditiously.

Keeping in view the coming Kharif season, the CM had detailed deliberations which lasted for one and a half hours with the Union Secretary, Food and Public Distribution Sudhanshu Pandey, who called on the former at his office this afternoon.

During the interaction with Channi who was accompanied by Deputy CM Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, the Union Secretary complimented the enormous contribution of Punjab in the national food pool in terms of both wheat and paddy.

Acceding to the request of the CM to allow the current procurement of paddy according to the previous norms, Pandey informed him that GoI has already taken a decision to procure paddy in the state as per the existing norms during the current paddy season starting from 1 October. Channi informed the Union Secretary that for the future also the revised norms should only be finalised by taking all the stakeholders including the Punjab government and Associations of farmers’, arthiyas and mills into confidence as imposing these unilaterally would mean a great setback to Punjab.

Expecting a bumper paddy crop during the current season, the CM told the Secretary that the Government of India has fixed a target for procurement of 170 LMT of paddy. However, as per state agriculture production estimates, 191 LMT of paddy is expected during the KMS 2021-22 for which elaborate arrangements are already being made. He sought fulsome support and cooperation from the Centre to ensure smooth and hassle-free procurement as per the production target of the Agriculture supported by the Remote Sensing Data.

Showing concern over the slow movement of food grains stacked in the state godowns, Channi asked the Union Secretary to immediately tie up with the railway authorities to get these godowns vacated so that additional space could be created for the storage of fresh paddy/rice. The Union Secretary informed the CM that Chairman, Railway Board has allowed 70-80 racks daily for transporting food grains from Punjab to other destinations. He also emphasised the need to have close coordination between the Deputy Commissioners and the Senior Regional Manager, FCI Punjab Region to facilitate fast movement of food grains in godowns. Agreeing to the proposal of the Union Secretary to install more E-POS (point of sale) machines in all the government fair price shops to encourage other multi-tasking activities like collection of electricity bills, telephone bills and other utility like payment of insurance premium, mobile recharge etc., the CM directed the Secretary, Food & Civil Supplies Punjab to coordinate with the Centre for implementation of this scheme. The CM would hold a meeting soon to review the progress of this scheme. Due to the vagaries of nature, it is expected that some quality issues may arise at the time of harvesting. The CM requested the Union Secretary to allow the relaxation in norms instantly, if need be.