Farmers stop basmati trucks from UP, Haryana

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 24

At a time when the Punjab Government is looking at attracting industrial investors to give a boost to the state economy, consignments of trucks laden with basmati paddy from Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, meant for milling, have been forcibly stopped at the state’s borders by a group of farmers.

The paddy, of PUSA No 1 and Sugandha, is needed by rice shelling units in the state to get basmati and further send it to their customers abroad. For three days now, the owners of these rice mills have been running from pillar to post, trying to get the government to intervene and resolve the issue, but in vain.

CMO informed

Officials in Agriculture and Food and Supplies Departments said they were aware of the issue and it had been brought in the knowledge of the Chief Minister’s Office. “We will resolve it at the earliest,” said senior officials in both departments.

Owners of the mills say at a time when the atmosphere is politically charged and the farmers’ issue is a “political hot potato”, the government is not too forthcoming in resolving the issue and had left them at the mercy of protesters. “We have been told to resolve the issue at our own level,” said a Moga-based miller.

The genesis of the problem lies in the freezing of the paddy procurement limit by the Government of India at 170 lakh metric tonne, forcing the state government to monitor the influx of paddy on their portal. The system was initiated on October 14, and since then, each consignment of paddy coming from other states to the rice mills in Punjab is tracked till it reaches the mills.

But in spite of these trucks having requisite permissions to reach the mills in Punjab, the protesters have stopped the trucks at Shambhu, Pattran and Khanauri borders, saying if basmati crop from outside the state is brought for shelling, the basmati farmers here will not get higher price.