No let-up in protests as paddy piles up in mandis

Amid the current kharif procurement season marred due to ‘tardy’ procurement and non-lifting, a total of 35.73 lakh tonnes of freshly harvested paddy has been received in 2,036 of the total 2,779 mandis and procurement centres in the state.

The daily arrivals started picking up on Tuesday, with 4.85 lakh tonnes arriving in the mandis. To date, as per government data, a total of 32.29 lakh tonnes (over 90%) have been procured, but the lifting of the crop continues to pose a hurdle. The arrivals are just 19% of the total expected procurement of 185 lakh tonnes.

Slow lifting has led to a glut-like situation and to date, 7.84 lakh tonnes have been lifted, which is 22% of the cumulative arrivals.

Besides the miller’s apprehension about PR 126, the slow lifting has also been attributed to packed godowns. As per data, 48 lakh tonnes of wheat and 120 lakh tonnes of rice procured during the previous seasons are yet to be transferred outside the state, leaving Punjab with only 7 lakh tonnes of space for the freshly shelled rice.

District Patiala tops the chart in terms of arrivals with 3.58 lakh tonnes reaching the mandis, followed by Tarn Taran (2.75 lakh tonnes), Kapurthala (2.54 lakh tonnes), Ferozepur (2.4 lakh tonnes) and Jalandhar (2.04 lakh tonnes). Districts with the slowest arrivals are Barnala with 23,660 tonnes and Panthakot 27,740 tonnes.

According to Ravinder Singh Cheema, former president of the arhtiyas association, the crop is not being lifted as rice millers are not willing to store the freshly procured paddy.

“We stand by our concerns”, the rice millers’ association’s vice-president Ranjit Singh Josson said. “We want teams to be sent to the state so that sampling of the fresh produce can be done to know the exact rice yield,” he said.

As per data from the Doaba region, only 4% of purchased paddy stock has been lifted in Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar (Nawashahr) district. Only 4,531 metric tonnes of the produce have been lifted out of 1.22 lakh MT purchased so far. In Hoshiarpur, of the total paddy purchase of 1.10 lakh MT, only 7.3% (8,135 MT) has been lifted. The total arrivals stand at 1.16 LMT. As far as Jalandhar district is concerned, which remained the epicentre of the farmer protest for the past week, only 18,754 MT of paddy crop has been lifted which translates to 11.18% of purchased 1.67 LMT against the arrival of 1.73 lakh MT.

In Kapurthala district, 2.29 LMT of paddy arrived at the purchasing centres, of which 2.27 lakh MT has been purchased, while only 81,843 MT (36%) has been lifted from the grain markets.

Meanwhile, in the Majha region too farmers are complaining about the procurement process.

Tajinderpal Singh, a farmer from Rasoolpur village of Tarn Taran district, said, “Status quo remains in the mandis.”

Gurbinder Singh Bajwa, a farmer from Sarchoor village of Gurdaspur district, said, “The farmers are forced to sell the produce at ₹1,800 per quintal instead of MSP.”

Farmers refuse to lift blockade at Delhi-Jalandhar NH, toll plazas

Despite multiple meetings with the administration, farmers refused to lift the blockade on the Delhi-Jalandhar national highway near Phagwara for the second consecutive day.

Farmers, on Tuesday, opened the service lane for light vehicular movement, however, the heavy vehicular traffic remained diverted via alternate routes.

BKU (Doaba) district president Manjit Singh Rai said: “The administration assured us of streamlining the lifting process but nothing has been implemented on the ground. There is hardly any place to unload fresh stock in the mandis.” Kapurthala deputy commissioner Amit Kumar Panchal and SSP Vatsala Gupta held multiple meetings with the agitating farmers but to no avail.

Meanwhile, in the South Malwa region, the indefinite protest by the Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) activists at 25 toll plazas entered its sixth day on Tuesday. BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) state secretary Shingara Singh Mann said farmers are holding round-the-clock sit-ins at 25 toll plazas and another 25 dharnas are being held outside the residences of AAP legislators and ministers.

With inputs from HTC, Bathinda, Amritsar