Govt Agency Confirms Centre's Auctions Allowed Millers To Corner Pulses Meant For The Poor

By Dilip -

The Union government’s auctions to provide pulses to the poor and armed forces, worth more than Rs 4,600 crore, were rigged to benefit a few big millers, findings from the National Productivity Council, headed by commerce minister Piyush Goyal, have revealed. The council presented its preliminary findings on October 11, 2021, to a committee overseeing the price stabilisation of pulses and other commodities in India. The Reporters’ Collective accessed this presentation.

The council is an autonomous government research agency that studied the auctions held to pick millers who turn raw pulses into their ready-to-cook form and distribute them. The council found that the terms of these auctions allowed the millers to fleece the government of tonnes of pulses and sell them at a profit in the open market, as well as allowing them to supply poor quality pulses.

The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED), under the Union agriculture ministry, developed the auction method that the council discovered was helping millers make a fortune. The council has recommended that NAFED scrap the auction process, which has been on since 2018. In an earlier investigation, the Reporters’ Collective had exposed how NAFED had allowed millers to swindle tonnes of pulses meant for the poor by rewriting the conventional auction procedures the government uses…

https://thewire.in/economy/govt-agency-confirms-centres-auctions-allowed-millers-to-corner-pulses-meant-for-the-poor


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