Huge irregularities in cotton procurement exposed

Adilabad: The Marketing department suspended sever marketing secretaries in the wake of huge ir-regularities in cotton procurement in the names of farmers by Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) have been exposed across the State.

It has been found that a large number of pur-chases were made in the names of farmers without temporary registration documents in the purchase of cotton by CCI. The purchase was made at a level double that of the yield, which created an opportunity for irregularities.

The Agriculture department had already col-lected the details of how many farmers and how many acres of cotton were cultivated across the State and reported it to the Marketing department.

The Marketing officials had also created an app and recorded the details of the farmers.

It has been learned that instead of the cotton sold by farmers at CCI centers, some middle-men in the names of farmers sold cotton on a large scale in collusion with Marketing officials without registering Aadhaar numbers and without having a certificate from the Agricul-ture department.

As the investigation revealed irregularities in the purchase of cotton by CCI to this extent, seven marketing secretaries in the Warangal re-gion who were responsible for this have been suspended.

Adilabad district Jainath marketing secretary Kamble Madhukar (Adilabad in-charge), Chen-nur agricultural market secretary Ramanjaneyu-lu, Janagama secretary Sangineni Srinivas, Ped-dapalli market secretary Prithviraj, Bhadradri Kothagudem secretary Srinivas, and Chinnako-dur secretary Parameshwar are among those suspended.