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Support price for paddy sought

Correspondent

CPI(M) sees role for millers from outside

VIZIANAGARAM: The CPI (M) district committee has asked the district administration to ensure that support price for paddy is paid to farmers.

It also demanded that millers from outside the district be allowed for lifting paddy.

The party secretary M. Krishna Murty made the demand in the wake of local millers' argument that the target set for rice procurement could not be achieved if millers from other districts were allowed to purchase paddy.

Competition

At a press conference on Thursday, Mr. Murty feared that in the absence of competition among millers farmers would get cheated at the hands of locals.

While millers from other districts had been lifting 75 kg-bag of paddy at Rs. 480 the locals were offering Rs. 440 to Rs. 460 in addition to cheating farmers in weighment, he said and added that the administrtion though had opened 24 paddy purchasing centres not a kilogram was so far procured from farmers.

The administration seems to be succumbing to the pressure from local millers, he said.

The procurement quota for the district was fixed at 36,000 MT against 80,000 MT in the past.

Encouraging yield

The yield per acre was encouraging this year due to normal monsoon and it was expected that 1.60 lakh MT of paddy out of 2.15 lakh MT would arrive in market.

The support price for `A' grade variety was fixed at Rs. 650 per quintal and common variety at Rs. 620 per quintal.

Majority of farmers in the district prefer to raise 1,001 variety keeping in view its resistance to pest.

The FCI would not lift this variety as it was only fit for boiled rice.

The administration must allow millers from outside the district to lift paddy as there was no boiled rice-processing unit in the district, he said.

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