New Delhi, (Samajweekly) The payment for procurement of grains directly goes to the bank account of the farmers without any middlemen in between, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Responding to a question of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP GVL Narasimha Rao about the delay in the release of payment to farmers for procurement of paddy in Andhra Pradesh, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Piyush Goyal said that now, payments go directly to the bank account of the farmer through the direct benefit transfer.
He also said that in 90 per cent of cases, the Central government pays money in advance to the states.
Goyal also said that under the guidance of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and with the help of technology, the payment to farmers have been transferred directly to their accounts bypassing the middlemen.
“If any state reports on the delay in payment by the Central procurement agencies, the government will definitely send a team there to investigate the matter,” he further said.
The Minister also said that in some states such as West Bengal and Delhi, the linking of bank accounts with the Aadhaar of the farmers was not done, but now this has been done in every state.
Regarding the mismatch of the procurements of paddy and the stocks of the same in Telangana by the central agencies, the Minister said that if the state government complains about it, that will be investigated.
Replying to the question of BJD MP Sasmit Patra for the lifting of the surplus parboiled rice from Odisha, Goyal said that this issue has come up earlier too and the Odisha government has informed the Ministry about this.
The Minister said that the government has taken a consistent stand that made it clear that the Food Corporation of India has done a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that the FCI will take the excess rice of the quality which has a demand in other states also.
He also said that the Odisha government can take as much as parboil rice and get it distributed in the state but the parboiled rice is not in demand in other states, therefore, what central agencies will do with parboiled rice, he asked.
He also said that the central agencies have already taken excess rice from Odisha as per its requirements.
