21,728 RICE BAGS FOUND HOARDED IN SANGRUR

SANGRUR : A team of the Punjab food and civil supplies department conducted raids at five mills in Sangrur district and found 21,728 bags of hoarded rice.

These rice mills were allegedly trying to recycle public distribution system (PDS) rice into the milling process, said Rakesh Kumar Singla, chief vigilance officer of the department.

Some rice mill owners procured PDS rice bought in black market last year from other states and saved it to recycle it in the coming milling season by showing bogus procurement of the crop through fictitious bills, he said. Singla said 9,325 bags of rice were found at Shiva Rice and General Mills, 3,852 at Duggan Rice Mill, 1,193 at Shree Rama Rice Mills, 2,810 at Punjab Paper Board Rice Mills, 1,500 in Trishala Food and 3,084 at Bansal Agro.

He said to evade action, some millers were playing a friendly match by issuing bills to each other to prove that the rice is genuinely purchased from another rice mill, without being able to provide an inherent evidence to support the logic behind such sales/purchases. “The new hideout is cold storage,” he said, adding that two trucks with 350 bags of rice and 350 bags of broken rice were spotted outside a cold storage in Malerkotla.

In a statement, food and civil supplies minister Bharat Bhushan Ashu said: “Despite repeated warnings , the rice millers have not mended their ways. We are writing to mandi board and sales tax department and will also initiate criminal action against them.”