OVER 113 LAKH TONNE OF RICE PROCURED IN PUNJAB
NEW DELHI: The government has procured 113.3 lakh tonnes of rice in Punjab and 39.09 lakh tonnes in Haryana in the current marketing season so far, according to official data.
According to Food Corporation of India (FCI) data, rice procurement has reached 238.8 lakh tonnes of rice in the current 2018-19 marketing season in the country with the buying in Punjab and Haryana almost over.
Rice procurement target for the current season (October-september) has been fixed at 375 lakh tonnes.
In the previous year, total rice procurement stood at 381.8 lakh tonnes.
Procurement is undertaken by state-run FCI and state agencies for the central pool to meet the requirement of food security law.
At present, the government is procuring rice grown in the kharif season of this year. A food ministry official said the procurement operation in Punjab and Haryana is almost complete.
According to FCI data, rice procurement has reached 22.42 lakh tonnes in Chhattisgarh so far and touched 22.46 lakh tonnes in Telangana, 13.28 lakh tonnes in Uttar Pradesh and 10.7 lakh tonnes in Andhra Pradesh.
The buying in Chhattisgarh, where farmers had stopped selling their produce in anticipation of a hike in MSP, has resumed after the new government in the state implemented its poll promise.
Rice output is pegged at 99.24 million tonnes during the 2018-19 kharif season, as against 97.50 million tonnes in the year-ago period, as per the agriculture ministry’s first crop estimate. PATIALA: Police have booked Rulda Singh, suspended secretary of multi-purpose cooperative society of Durd village, for misappropriating ₹17.89 lakh of the organisation in 2017-18. Rulda, of Alipur Jattan village, was suspended five months ago on the charges of misusing government funds granted to the society and for not depositing the amount collected from the public with it.
State government auditors had detected the fraud during annual assessments earlier this year.
Assistant registrar cooperative societies, Tajeshwar Singh, had lodged a complaint at the Patiala Sadar police station against Rulda, leading to his booking. “It was found that Rulda has not deposited any amount to the cooperative societies which were collected by him from public. He sold fertilisers in violation of guidelines of cooperative societies. He was suspended from his post and a com- plaint was lodged against him. A lot of people had to suffer due to his actions,” said Tajeshwar.
Rulda has been booked under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant) of the Indian Penal Code at the Patiala Sadar police station.