OOTY: The Cooperatives department here said that investigation has been initiated into the alleged irregularities and malpractices into potato seeds supply issue in the Nilgiris Co-op Marketing Society(NCMS) here in the hills.
Stating this Ms. J. Neela, deputy registrar of Coop Societies and managing director of NCMS, said it was incorrect to say that NCMS is supposed to buy potato seeds only from ITC company.
“We buy potato seeds produced at Ludhiana by ITC and Mahindra companies. But, it is being done through a Bengaluru-based supplier. In last June, the NCMS purchased 4,600 bags of potato seeds from the supplier.
Each bag consisted of 50-kg of potato seeds. Out of this consignment of 4,600 bags, the fault is found in only 240 bags as those farmers who were supplied with the potato seeds from this controversial 240 bags are only complaining about crop loss," she explained.
Officials from the seed supplying company already visited the affected spots and took some samples for analysis. The local Horticulture department officials too inspected the spot. While all the seeds germinated, it failed to grow well afterwards and withered.
“We are waiting for the report from them. Only after the reported was submitted to the Cooperative department, we will come to a conclusion whether there was any biotechnical error in the seed or somebody tried to play fool by replacing the original seeds by inferior quality seeds,” she pointed out.
When asked about on how all the invoices in controversial seed supply bore the ITC name in them, even when Mahindra seeds were supplied to some farmers, Ms. Neela said that some error took place in preparing the invoice, adding, it was being probed into.
