Food & Supplies dept looks to ensure adequate paddy procurement in districts

Kolkata: The state Food and Supplies department is taking all necessary steps to ensure adequate procurement of paddy in West Midnapore, Jhargram, Bankura and Purulia.

Jyotipriya Mallick, the state Food and Supplies minister, will be visiting the districts in the end of June. Senior officials of the department will also be visiting the places along with the minister.

They will be visiting the places to oversee the procurement of paddy. This comes at a time when a target of procuring 35 lakh MT paddy has been set in the boro season. So far, the procurement of 29.5 lakh MT has become possible.

The process of procuring the remaining quantity of paddy is going on in full swing to reach the target.

Mallick held a high level meeting in Khadya Bhavan on Tuesday. The state Agriculture minister Asish Banerjee, Pradip Mazumder, advisor to the Chief Minister on agriculture, senior officials of the Food and Supplies department, district controllers and representatives of both Bengal Rice Millers' Association and District Rice Millers' Association, were also present in the meeting.

After the meeting, Mallick said: "I, along with officials of my department, will be visiting the districts in the end of June to oversee the procurement of paddy."

During the minister's visit to the district, he will hold meeting with administrative officers, distributors and dealers there.

He further said that rice cannot be stocked for than two months in any district. So, directions have been given in Tuesday's meeting, to disburse the excess quantity of rice after maintaining a stock of two to three months.

There are districts including West Midnapore, Purulia, Bankura and Jhargram, where paddy will be sent from Burdwan and Birbhum. It will help in ensuring adequate stock of rice in all districts.

Mallick said: "Our target is to support farmers and to ensure that they get the right price so that they do not have to go for distress sell."

With steps taken by the Mamata Banerjee government, there was hardly any case of distress sell in the past seven years, since her government came to power.