Rice millers and procuring agents bled exchequer of nearly Rs 70K crore: CAG

In the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, which was released on Tuesday, the central auditor has red-flagged a scam of siphoning of public money to the tune of Rs 70,000 crore ( which includes Rs 50,000 crore by millers, and Rs 20,000 crore by way of subsidy)

The national auditor pointed out irregularities after analysing the data provided by millers, which clearly proved that a huge amount of public money had been siphoned. 

“Despite significant increase in realisation value of by-products, milling charges have not been revised since 2005. This resulted in excess net realisation of Rs 3,743 crore from sale of by-products by the millers in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh during 2009-10 to 2013-14,” the report stated. The lapses were also found in paddy procurement, which is being mainly done through Food Corporation of India and state agencies. The CAG report stated, “The paddy procured from these four states was just 395.10 lakh MT against 2,499.37 lakh MT during the five year period, which represented 15.81 per cent only of the total procurement. The actual figure will invariably be much higher, if the Central government undertakes an exercise to ascertain full quantum of excess realisation by millers across the country.”

In Punjab, the procuring agencies didn’t recover the applicable penal interest from the millers for delayed milling of paddy of rice for KMS 2009-10, 2012-13 and 2013-14 resulting in undue benefit of Rs 159.47 crore to the millers due to waiver of penal interest, the report stated. However, the auditor noticed in the selected districts of Bihar, Haryana, Odisha, Punjab, Uttar Prdesh and Telangana that 15.89 lakh MT paddy valued at Rs 3,042 crore and 23.34 lakh MT of levy price Rs 4,527.91 crore was not delivered to FCI or SGAs. Also, the report stated that a large number of deficiencies like non-authentication of land holding, payment to farmers with doubtful identity, etc were noticed in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. 

“The amount of such MSP payments were Rs 17,985.49 crore for which there was no assurance that the farmers actually did get full MSP for their produce from millers/FCI/SGAs,” it said. 

The CAG findings also say that in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Chhattisgarh, large quantities of paddy/custom milled rice (CMR) ranging from 14 quintals to 1,800 quintals were transported through doubtful means of transport such as motorcycle, auto rickshaw, jeep, taxi, thela (jugad), car, etc. “In all, the total quantities of paddy depicted as transported through these doubtful means was 5,744.08 MT valued at Rs 6.58 crore indicating possibility of false claims being submitted by the transporters,” the CAG report said.

Also, Punjab had made full payment for sub-standard quantity of 82.46 lakh MT paddy valued at Rs 9,788 crore procured by SGA during 2010-11 and 2013-14, which was found below specification by the Centre.