JOIN USUttar Pradesh to buy wheat in farmers' bags
Uttar Pradesh government has devised a new plan to tide over the shortage of jute bags in the state. It has decided to allow purchase of wheat from the farmers in their own bags.
“We will return the bags of the farmers to them once we have adequate stock,” said Uttar Pradesh minister for food and civil supplies Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya here.
He said the state government has also placed orders for procuring 20,000 bales of plastic bags directly from the manufacturing units in Kolkata to tide over the shortage. “The Food Corporation of India has provided the state 6,289 bales of bags...but that is not sufficient,” he said. The government has also arranged 200 trucks to transport 10,000 bales of bags, the minister added.
Singh put the blame for the shortage of the bags squarely on the centre. “The lax attitude of the centre has resulted in the crisis,” he claimed, reacting to the centre’s contention that there was no dearth of jute bags but lack of advance planning by states like Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh was creating an artificial scarcity. He also alleged that UP has been discriminated against by the centre as far as supply of bags was concerned. While Punjab has been given 101 per cent bags in proportion to the demand, UP has received only 35 per cent of what it had demanded. UP has set a target to procure 4.2 million tons of wheat. The production this year is pegged at 31.5 million tons as against 29 million tons last year.
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