CHANDIGARH, Oct 23: A team from the Union Food ministry will visit Punjab tomorrow to assess the extent of damage caused to paddy in terms of discoloration and moisture.
“A two-member team from Union Food ministry will visit Punjab tomorrow to analyse the position of damage and discoloration in paddy,” a senior official of FCI here today.
He further said along with the Central team, officials from FCI (Punjab) will accompany them and visit the areas where the crop is reported to have been affected due to recent rains.
“The team will visiting some parts of Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Gurdaspur to see the extent of damage caused to paddy,” he added.
“Based upon the situation, they will recommend for the action which might include relaxation also,” he further said.
After paddy growers protested against non-procurement of crop due to high moisture content, Punjab government had asked Union Food minister K V Thomas to relax norms for paddy procurement.
Punjab Food and Civil Supplies Minister Adesh Partap Singh Kairon had called up Thomas on October 21 to immediately announce relaxations in existing procurement norms of paddy, which has been considerably discoloured due to recent rains across state.
Thomas had assured the minister that he would soon dispatch technical teams of the officers from the food ministry to take stock of the situation and assess the extent of damage caused to paddy in terms of discoloration and moisture.
The state government had sought from the Centre to take sympathetic view of the situation to bail out the state’s peasantry by relaxing prescribed norms of paddy procurement, immediately after the submission of report.
Farmers at several places in the state have been protesting against the non-procurement of paddy by government agencies and private traders.
They have also alleged that they had been forced to sell crop lower than the MSP rate as procurement agencies and private traders were refusing to buy the crop on the pretext of high moisture content.
Paddy growers have been reporting over 20 per cent of moisture content in the crop.
Because of high moisture content, procurement agencies have not been buying the crop and as a result of which, farmers are forced to sell their produce far below the MSP of Rs 1,345 per quintal, farmers had said.
Bhartiya Kisan Union (Rajewal) President Balbir Singh Rajewal had demanded that specification pertaining to moisture content in paddy should be raised from 17 per cent to 22 per cent.
Besides, the norm for discoloured grains be increased from 4 per cent to 8 per cent. (PTI)
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