Telangana: Recycling of PDS rice exposed

Hyderabad: PDS rice for the poor was fraudulently getting back into the system in Nagarkurnool district. The vigilance teams of the civil supplies department on Friday caught rice millers who tried to sell 1,080 bags of PDS rice worth Rs 15 lakh to the department.

Civil supplies commissioner C.V. Anand ordered officials to book criminal cases against errant millers and blacklist them. On information that some fraudsters were trying to sell PDS rice back to the government, Mr Anand ordered raids on PDS rice godowns and rice mills.

Purchase of state pool rice from Nagarkurnool mills was suspended and a godown incharge was removed from service.

He warned the State Rice Millers Association for not keeping a tab on their millers and threatened to stop milling charges and other payments to such millers.

As there was stock shortage, the government was purchasing 6 lakh tonnes of raw rice for PDS and 1.5 lakh tonnes of fine rice from millers through tenders for the government hostel mid-day meals and soc-ial welfare schemes.

Irregularities were noticed in Nagarkurnool and Sircilla districts. In the latter, some millers sold inferior quality rice to the government.

The search team found that rice stored in Jadcherla godown in Mahbubnagar district came from two mills in Nagarkurnool. It was PDS rice taken from ration shops and sold back to the government.

Sriramulu of Srinivasa Rice Mill, Mallesh of Venkateswara Rice Mill from Nagarkurnool were said to be involved in the illegal sale.

The commissioner ordered the two millers to appear before him at his office, though they did not turn up. 

The electricity bills of the mills made it clear that they were not milling the rice, officials said.

Bags of PDS rice was stacked along with the regular ones in lorries. After the implementation of ePos system, moving PDS rice into black market was difficult. As a result, millers had purchased rice much in advance from ration shops and stocked them.