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Relax yield norms: Rice millers to govt

CHANDIGARH: After arm-twisting the state government to stop conducting physical verification of their stock following recovery of PDS rice, rice millers in the state are now eyeing additional profits of Rs 580 crore by pressuring it to relax norms for custom milling of rice.

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Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 29

After arm-twisting the state government to stop conducting physical verification of their stock following recovery of PDS rice, rice millers in the state are now eyeing additional profits of Rs 580 crore by pressuring it to relax norms for custom milling of rice.

Under pressure from the strong rice millers’ lobby, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has already written a demi-official letter to Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan, requesting him to relax norms of yield of rice from paddy in custom milling from 67 kg per quintal to 64 kg.

A similar letter has been written to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) by the state government. Notably, a large majority of big rice millers are located in Karnal, Khattar’s Assembly segment.

“It is highly unlikely that the FCI will relax norms as it will have to give similar relaxation to Punjab, where paddy procurement is three times that of Haryana. Millers are pressuring the state government to provide this benefit from its own funds. Millers are giving the example of Uttar Pradesh, where the total procurement of paddy is hardly 3 lakh MT,” said sources.

The sources said with elections to the state Assembly less than 10 months away, millers are hopeful that their demand will be accepted by the state government.

Rice millers have 58.5 lakh MT belonging to state procurement agencies, against which they have to deliver 39.2 lakh MT of rice to the government after custom milling.

If the demand of rice millers is accepted, they will have to deliver 1.76 lakh MT rice less than the quantity earlier agreed upon, which would amount to a financial burden of over Rs 580 crore to the state government.

According to the sources, there are about 1,100 millers in the state, of which 200 are big millers. If the demand is accepted, each of them is set to get an additional benefit of between Rs 2 crore and Rs 5 crore.

Besides this, millers are demanding extension of deadline for delivery of rice from March 31 to June 30 without holding charges, citing delay in start of milling due to rain in November.

The sources said poor quality rice, including PDS rice, had again started coming to Haryana from Uttar Pradesh and other states and some unscrupulous millers mixed it with freshly milled rice to earn more profit.

In October, millers had gone on strike after recovery of PDS rice from some mills and forced the government to stop physical verification of their establishments as a precondition for starting custom milling.

Opposing the millers’ demand, Gurnam Singh Charuni, president of the Bhartiya Kisan Union, alleged that the millers had already exploited farmers in the name of moisture in paddy at the time of procurement and were now claiming benefits from the government.

“If the government wants to alter norms, it should be at the time of procurement. The parameter of moisture content in paddy should be increased from 17 per cent to 19 per cent,” he said.

Vinod Goel, senior vice-president of the Haryana Rice Millers and Dealers Association, said they had purchased paddy during untimely rain.

“This affected the quality and yield of paddy. The moisture in paddy led to discolour, broken and damaged grain. In such circumstances, we are not able to return 67 kg rice per quintal to the FCI after milling. The UP Government has recently relaxed norms and reduced it to 64 kg rice per quintal,” he said.

Asked about the demand of extending the three-month period for delivery of rice after milling, he said due to work to rule in the FCI from October to December 10, they were not able to deliver their rice to the FCI as only a few trucks were allowed to unload rice, resulting in delay in delivery.

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