With pressure from grain sellers and internal conflicts between food and civil supplies minister Girish Bapat and the bureaucracy, the Maharashtra government is finding it tough to reach consensus about making tur dal available at a reasonable price to consumers. After getting no response from the grain sellers to indemnity bonds, the government has decided to directly auction the seized dal. Earlier, hoarders were asked to give indemnity bonds that they would sell the tur at Rs 100 and would not stock more than the limit. The issue of inflated prices was reflected in Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis had to intervene.
A day after Mr Bapat’s blamed secretary Deepak Kapoor over the delay in auction of the seized tur dal, chief secretary Swadheen Kshatriya held a meeting and asked for a report from the department. It was decided at the meeting that seized dal would be auctioned to make it available in the market immediately.
“There are two options, the grain sellers can sign an indemnity bond ensuring availability of tur dal at Rs 100 per kg. One can also go for auction immediately after seizure of the dal. The government wanted to ensure that the dal would not remain in godowns for a long time. The state so far has seized about 80,000 mt of dal of which 13,000 mt is tur,” Mr Kshatriya said.
So far, the seized dal has not been made available for immediate auction, and hence the inflated prices did not come down. NCP leader Nawab Malik blamed the government for “increasing prices by keeping the seized stock in godowns and helping businessmen”. “The government took long time to decide about the auction and the prices of pulses went up due to shortage in the market. Also, all the pulses are expensive but the government is talking about tur dal only,” Mr Malik said. Earlier, on Monday, Mr Bapat had making dal available in the market and had written a letter to Mr Fadnavis.
