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NAFED says no to pulses, oilseeds procurement in Gujarat

The development comes a few months after fires occured in some groundnut warehouses, and adulteration was spotted in one of the instances

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The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) has told the Centre that it would not be able to undertake procurement of green gram, black gram, tur and groundnut in the state this year.

The development comes a few months after fires occured in some groundnut warehouses, and adulteration was spotted in one of the instances.

Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil said that NAFED had decided against procurement in Gujarat due to irregularities and glaring shortcomings in fetching and storage process, and had also demanded a probe by a sitting High Court judge in the case.

Gohil produced NAFED's November 15 letter to the Union agriculture ministry, in which the Federation raised concerns over the appointment of the Gujarat State Civil Services Corporation as the State Lead Supporter for procurement of pulses and oilseeds during Kharif 2018-19 in the state. NAFED also conveyed concerns over allowing packaging of groundnut in 30 kilogramme packs instead of the normal 35 kilogramme packs, saying it would have financial constraints.

Talking about procurement in the last Kharif season, the Federation mentioned paucity of scientific warehouses, and also said that the warehousing corporation was not following standard operating procedure for safe storage of stocks. It also pointed out that the corporation suffered from acute shortage of trained manpower.

"Godowns hired by them are often far from procuring areas and in some cases, the agencies had to cover over 300 km for warehousing," it said.

The Federation also expressed concern over large groundnut stock lying unutilized.

"The government had committed to utilise PSS stock of groundnut under PDS, but still sizeable stock of 3.37 lakh tonne is lying for disposal. When procurement starts, disposal of this stock has to be suspended for 90 days, which will add huge carry cost, and the stocks may be susceptible for deterioration," NAFED said, asking the state to assign procurement task to another agency.

CAUSE OF CONCERN

The development comes a few months after fires occurred in some groundnut warehouses, and adulteration was spotted in one of the instances

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