Telangana government sees a threat from AP paddy mafia

Hyderabad: As paddy procurement from farmers picked up, the Telangana government saw a big threat from the paddy mafia from Andhra Pradesh and other neighbouring States.

The TS government has established 51 check-posts and deployed special teams to monitor the movement of the paddy trucks at 17 border districts of the State. It has come to light that paddy mafia was shifting the paddy stocks to Telangana to get good price offered by the government at the procurement centres.

State Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar on Thursday held a meeting with Civil Supplies department officials and took stock of the paddy procurement in the state. The Commissioner Civil Supplies informed that paddy procurement was going on smoothly across the State. So far 4.61 lakh Metric Tonnes (MTs)of paddy have been procured in the State from 61,300 farmers through 3,679 paddy procurement centres. The present availability of gunny bags was also sufficient to procure 31 lakh MTs of paddy. The Chief Secretary directed the officials to upload the details of paddy procured same day so that payment can be made to the farmers at the earliest.

He said that money was not a problem as the government has mobilised Rs 5,000 crore for this purpose. As soon as the paddy is procured the same is being sent to mills.

About 4.3 lakh MTs paddy has already been shifted to mills and as such there is no backlog, he said. As the harvesting has not started in Warangal, Gadwal, Wanaparthy, Bhoopalpally and Nagarkurnool districts, paddy procurement centres have not been set up in these districts, Chief Secretary said and added that the paddy procurement centres will be set up once harvesting in these districts begins.

The Civil Supplies officials informed Somesh that while 7.8 crore gunny bags were readily available, tenders for procuring eight crore gunny bags are being finalised at the earliest. In addition to that 2.5 crore gunny bags will be received from Jute Corporation of India shortly. Fifty-one check-posts have been established in 17 border districts of the State to ensure that paddy is not brought by middlemen from other States to the paddy procurement centres.