No more offline trading at 455 e-mandis from Oct 1

New Delhi: In a move aimed at weeding out middlemen from mandis, the government has decided to put an end to offline trading in all 455 mandis that are linked to the electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) platform of the ministry. According to a senior official, no offline transactions would be allowed post-September 30.

The move has been initiated to bring transparency in mandis through online trading that would help in doubling the income of farmers. According to the official, following directions from Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, the ministry has decided to put an end to the practice of offline transactions in all 455 mandis from September 30.

"No offline trading would be allowed in any of the 455 mandis registered with e-NAM as it's the middlemen who are eating into the profits of farmers. The online transactions would help farmers in getting a better price for their produce as they would be able to sell it directly to registered traders," the official said.

"Once the target to bring all 585 mandis on e-NAM platform is achieved, the offline trading will be a thing of the past. The government has set a target to link 585 mandis to the e-NAM platform by March 2018," the official said.

Union Agriculture Secretary SK Pattanayak has written to the chief secretaries of 13 states that have operational eNAM to take necessary action to encourage farmers and traders to conduct online transactions.

As of August, as many as 455 mandis across 13 states have been integrated with eNAM, which is used for trading in 90 commodities. About 47 lakh farmers, 91,000 traders and 48,000 commission agents are registered with the eNAM portal that is aimed at bringing in transparency in agri-marketing.