Sirsa, October 29
Over 95,000 bags of rotten wheat lying in the storehouse of the Haryana State Warehousing Corporation (HSWC) at Bani village will fetch the corporation much less than Re 1 per kg. The highest bid received by the corporation for the disposal of the decayed wheat is 62 paise per kg.

Though the authorities maintain that they have yet to accept the bid, sources said there was no hope for a better option and any delay would see the bid amount falling further.

As many as 1,70,000 bags of wheat belonging to the corporation was submerged in 10 ft-12ft water when floodwaters from the Ghaggar entered Bani village in July this year. The total value of the wheat submerged is estimated at Rs 11 crore.

However, when the authorities began sorting of the damaged wheat in mid- August, they had maintained that the loss was unlikely to be substantial.

The authorities had claimed that depending on the percentage of sound grain, the wheat would be classified as “sound, feed-one, feed-two, feed-three, industrial, manure and dumping.”

Norms of the FCI specify that wheat with less than 2 per cent damage is called “sound”. The lot with 85 to 90 per cent sound grain is categorised as feed-one and that with 70 to 85 per cent sound grain as feed-two. Both are used as animal feed.

Category feed-three with 55 to 70 per cent sound grain is used for poultry, that with 30 per cent to 55 per cent sound grain for making starch, with 10 to 30 per cent sound grain as manure and that with less than 10 per cent sound grain is placed in the “dumping” category.

Now, after sorting the rotten wheat, the authorities have found that 95,340 bags (4767 tonnes) out of a total 1,70,000 are of the dumping category, for which the highest bid received by the authorities is 0.62 paisa per kg. Only 2,280 bags have been found of feed one quality for which the highest bid received is Rs 940 per quintal.

The 4,920 bags with more than 60 per cent damage to the grain have attracted a maximum bid of Rs 216 per quintal. Earlier, the authorities had supplied 3200 tonnes (64,000 bags) of wheat to the FCI, claiming these were of sound quality.

Confirming the bids, ML Verma, District Manager, HSWC, said the bids were subject to approval of the higher authorities at Chandigarh.

Krishan Kumar, Managing Director of the corporation, was not in office and said he would comment only after seeing the files.

New Delhi, October 29
The Supreme Court today advised the Centre to bring an additional 70 million below poverty line (BPL) families under the Public Distribution System (PDS) for dealing with the problem of lack of godowns that would be compounded by the procurement for the ‘kharif’ season which began on October 1.

A Bench comprising Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma noted that the Centre was still going by a 1991 estimate of BPL families for allocating PDS foodgrains to the states, while recent surveys showed their number had gone up considerably.

The court asked the Centre to file its response to the suggestion by the next hearing on November 11 through Attorney- General GE Vahanvati. It also sought the government’s views on the plea by the petitioner, Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), for covering the entire population of those living in the 150 poorest districts of the nation.

The Centre would also have to explain the huge difference between its estimate of BPL families and those of the states. The court observed that the quantity of foodgrain damaged in godowns had been given only in respect of Punjab and Haryana (at 67,639 tonnes) and this showed that the national level loss was bound to be high, underlining the problem of inadequate storage facilities.