Raids net additional 24k tonnes of pulses

Govt crackdown on hoarders continues

As the government battles shortage of pulses, farmers have taken to the crop big time by doubling its acreage for the Rabi season even as the continuing government crackdown on hoarders yielded an additional 24,189 tonnes of the commodity.

Sowing for the winter crop began last week with farmers bringing 9.83 lakh hectares of farm land under pulses cultivation, a sharp increase from 4.75 lakh hectares for the same period last year.

Sowing for the Rabi season begins in October with the crop being harvested in March.

Owing to uncertain weather, pulses production dropped marginally to 5.56 million tonnes in the Kharif season this year. The government has set a target of 13 million tonnes for pulses for the Rabi season.

“As per preliminary reports, sowing of Rabi crops has started in some parts of the country,” the Agriculture Ministry said. Though sowing of pulses have more than doubled, the government has to announce incentives in the form of higher minimum support price (MSP) for the trend to continue.

As on Friday, the area sown to wheat has also increased to 20,000 hectares from 15,000 hectares in the year-ago period. Area sown to coarse cereals has also increased to 16.57 lakh hectare as against 11.19 lakh hectare in the year-ago period while oilseeds are being cultivated on 1.60 lakh hectares, up from the 1.28 lakh hectare in the year ago period.

Meanwhile, state governments continued raids on millers, large traders and large departmental stores for hoardings.

A Consumer Affairs Ministry statement said 24,189 metric tonnes of additional pulses were recovered till Saturday taking the total seizures to 74,846.359 metric tonnes.

So far, 6,077 raids have been conducted by state governments after the amendment to the Central Order under Essential Commodities Act was amended on Sunday last.
Fresh raids were carried out in seven states with Maharashtra reporting recovery of 16,024 tonnes of pulses in 1994 raids.

In poll-bound Bihar, raids were carried out at 60 locations from where 4933.89 tonnes of pulses were recovered. In Karnataka, 2688 tonnes of pulses were recovered in 158 raids.

The Centre has also asked state governments to have meetings with millers, wholesalers and retailers to make pulses available in retail markets at reasonable prices.