Telangana: Millers return 77 per cent of PDS rice

Hyderabad: Rice millers who had been resorting to diverting PDS rice to the black market have fallen in line. The state government’s decision appointing an IPS officer as commissioner of civil supplies for the first time in August last year to check irregularities has paid off.

Rice millers returned 77 per cent of custom-ised milling rice meant for PDS to the government even before the rice procurement for this kharif season is yet to end, which is a first in the past few decades.

Tight measures initiated by civil supplies commissioner C.V. Anand to check diversion of PDS rice from mills have been appreciated by state government, which has resulted in huge savings for state exchequer.

Earlier, millers used to divert PDS rice every year and returned it to government after years on being served notices repeatedly. This is no more the case now.

For every quintal of boiled rice milled, millers have to return 68 kg and for raw rice, they return 67 kg. “The meetings held with rice millers to streamline the milling system, stern action against recycling and diversion of PDS rice, lodging criminal cases against errant millers and blacklisting them, stopping supply of milling rice to millers booked under Section 6(A) during the last six months have yielded better results,” he said.

The millers already returned 77 per cent CMR rice this year and we have fixed a deadline of February 15 for them to return the remaining 23 per cent. We are confident of achieving the target,” said Mr Anand.

Telangana gets new teams for enforcement
The Telangana State government has constituted a Civil Supplies Enforcement Wing with five teams to check irregularities in the PDS.

This is the first-of-its-kind initiative being implemented in the civil supplies department to check diversion of subsidised commodities supplied through PDS.

The teams can take up field-level inspections to check the div-ersion of PDS stocks, inspections of private godowns and filing cases against those indulging in irregularities etc.

Five teams have been formed with four retired officials in each team drawn from police, commercial taxes, revenue and Food Corpor-ation of India departments.