In a corner in Jalna Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) yard, there are over 990 bags of toor dal. It is a stock of 100,000 kg of toor dal worth Rs 50 lakh abandoned in the APMC since April 21, 2017 that nobody has claimed for payment yet. No farmer would ever abandon such a huge stock, and considering the per acre production of 2.5 quintal, the stock in the Jalna APMC can be assumed to be a produce of over 400 acres that no single farmer owns.
“This has to be one of the traders' stock. He must have abandoned it when the word of traders selling to APMC and procurement started spreading out. This is a huge scam,” said Comrade Rajan Kshirsagar, a farmer activist.
Kshirsagar explained that the Maharashtra government didn't open procurement centres at the places where yield had multiplied. “Most of the toor dal producers sold their crop in the weekly markets because the procurement had stopped for a frivolous reason like shortage of gunny bags,” he said.
He pointed out that the government is capable of making over 50 crore people vote within a matter of days during elections. “Why can't the same government make preparations for procuring only 20 lakh quintals of toor?” Kshirsagar asked.
According to him, the shortage of gunny bags or storage space was a creation by the nexus between traders and political leaders to compel the farmers for distress sale. The state government claims to have procured 4.56 lakh quintal of toor dal at the Maximum Selling Price (MSP) of Rs 5,050 for a quintal.
“Almost all the quantity that the state procured was sold by the traders. They bought it for Rs 3,300 – Rs 3,800 a quintal from the farmers in distress, created in connivance with the officials and sold it at Rs 5,050 to the government,” said Kshirsagar.
Kishor Lunkad, a trader, sold 32 quintals of toor dal to the government at MSP. His online 7/12 extract (from the land register maintained by the revenue department of the government of Maharashtra) does not mention cultivation of toor dal at all, but despite that, he sold the quantity at MSP as a farmer.
A battery trader named Bismillah sold as much as 57 quintal of toor dal to the government at MSP. Bismillah doesn't hold even an inch of agriculture land.
“The proportion and scale of this scam, if investigated honestly at every procurement centre, is to the tune of thousands of crores,” Kshirsagar said. The state government was procuring toor dal at 315 centres across the state.
“It is evident now that farmers sold their toor dal to traders at a price lesser by Rs 1,200 – Rs 1,800 than the MSP of Rs 5,050 a quintal,” said Prithviraj Chavan, former chief minister of Maharashtra. “Considering the 4.56 lakh quintal bought by the government, this would amount to a scam of over Rs 4,000 crore.” He alleged that the government played it to the benefit of the traders. He had earlier said that the procurement scam could be over Rs 400 crore.
“The government wants to keep the domestic prices low, at the cost of the lives of farmers, just to show that the inflation is low,” said Rajan Kshirsagar. “With figures of inflation at low levels, government keeps giving interest waivers of crores to the corporates.”
