Centre refuses to procure par boiled rice from T'gana

New Delhi: It seems the ongoing tussle between the Centre and Telangana government over the procurement of par-boiled rice is set to remain indecisive as the Centre has refused to procure around 1.5 million tonne (MT) of par-boiled rice under the central pool citing that there is no demand of par-boiled rice under the public distribution system and Food Corporation of India (FCI) has excess stock of the cereal.

At a hurriedly called press conference, Food & Public Distribution Secretary Sudhanshu Pandey said, "As on April 1, the FCI has 4 MT of par-boiled rice in the stock against the annual demand of around 2.8 MT of the grains under the PDS and most of the par-boiled rice is consumed in the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand."

"We have the stock of par-boiled rice for the next two years. As the shelf-life of the grain is around 1.5 years, we are not in the position to accept the additional amount of grain under the central pool from Telangana," Pandey further said.

In reply to a question as why the Centre did not inform farmers about the non-procurement of par-boiled rice, Pandey said that the Telangana government was informed well in advance about the centre's decision.

As per sources, the Centre had informed the states about its decision to not procure par-boiled rice in the Central pool from Kharif marketing season (June-July) for 2021-22 from any state due to high stock level and procurement of parboiled rice by consuming states such as Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal.

In the 2020-21 season, out of the total procurement of 8.83 MT of par-boiled rice by FCI, 4.88 MT of rice procured in Telangana and other key states which contributed to the central pool stocks were Odisha (1.7 MT), Chhattisgarh (1.5MT) and Andhra Pradesh (0.42 MT).