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By Ashutosh Mishra: With the prices of essential food grains, particularly pulses, seeing a surge, the government is now resorting to monitor the stocks of various Tur and Urad in the country. Senior officials of the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, visited ten different places across four states in the last few days to examine the stock disclosure status of Tur and Urad dal.
Secretary of Consumer Affairs Rohit Kumar Singh chaired an internal meeting with these officers who visited major pulse markets and interacted with various market players. Prices of Tur and Urad along with other pulses have been on the rise over the last few weeks.
Last week, the government held a meeting with the All India Dal Mills Association in Indore on April 15. Furthermore, the Department of Consumer Affairs has deputed 12 senior officers to visit various places in the states of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu to take stock of ground reality.
NO REGISTRATIONS, UPDATE ON STOCK POSITIONS
According to an official statement, interactions with market participants on the ground and state officials revealed that, while the number of registrations and stock disclosures on the e-portal is increasing, a significant number of market participants have either not registered or have failed to update their stock positions on a regular basis.
Furthermore, the government said the stocks in transactions, such as farmer’s stock lying in a mandi for auction or stock awaiting customs clearance at a port, have been seen to evade the present surveillance system.
Further, it has also been observed that millers and traders or dealers have resorted to holding their stocks in warehouses in the name of farmers in a deliberate attempt to escape stock declaration, the statement added.
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DECLARE STOCKS OR FACE ACTION
Senior officers of the department visited various locations, namely, Indore, Chennai, Salem, Mumbai, Akola, Latur, Sholapur, Kalaburagi, Jabalpur and Katni and interacted with officers of the state governments, millers, traders, importers and port authorities and conducted meeting with associations of millers, importers and traders.
The market players were educated on the importance of stock declaration and have been asked to declare their stocks truthfully and regularly or else stringent action such as seizure and confiscation of undeclared stocks may be done by the state government.
States have also been asked to look into the data pertaining to FSSAI licences, APMC registration, GST registration, warehouses and custom bonded warehouses and encourage these entities also to report their declarations of stock in order to widen the coverage of market players.
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CHANGES IN E-PORTAL
To improve the stock disclosure data, the department is making certain changes to the e-portal (https://fcainfoweb.nic.in/psp/) such as, incorporating text boxes for providing warehouses in which stock is held, provision for a dealer, commission agent and mandi trader to upload stock data of farmer lying in his shop yard for auctioning etc.
Furthermore, the department has been in touch with customs to take necessary action on importers who have deliberately delayed clearance of their consignments.
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