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Ordinance to restore Bhopal gas victims' property

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NK SINGH Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh Government on Thursday promulgated an ordinance for the restoration of moveable property sold by some people while fleeing Bhopal in panic following the gas leakage. The ordinance covers any transaction made by a person residing within the limits of the municipal corporation of Bhopal and specifies the period of the transaction as December 3 to December 24, 1984,  Any person who sold the moveable property within the specified period for a consideration which he feels was not commensurate with the prevailing market price may apply to the competent authority to be appointed by the state Government for declaring the transaction of sale to be void.  The applicant will furnish in his application the name and address of the purchaser, details of the moveable property sold, consideration received, the date and place of sale and any other particular which may be required.  The competent authority, on receipt of such an application, will conduct...

OPERATION ONION, A CRAZY PLAN


NK SINGH

Onion is selling in Bhopal at a retail price of Rs 13 a kg. MP Government is purchasing it from farmers at Rs 8 a kg and, then, auctioning it to wholesale dealers for Rs 2.50 a kg, the minimum sell price fixed. The middlemen are raking in unbelievable profit of 500 percent.

An economist may call it a harebrained idea: purchasing something for Rs eight a kg and then selling it at one-third of the price. But the government is doing it in the name of bailing out farmer, hit by a plunging market.

Operation Onion looks like a get-rich-quick scheme. Step one: Government buys at the rate of Rs eight a kg. Step two: Government sells at the rate of Rs 2.50 a kg.  Step three: Traders sell it back to farmers for Rs 5 a kg. Step four: Farmers recycle the sold-purchased-sold onions to government at Rs 8 a kg. Everyone makes a quick buck. Everyone is happy. It is simple. It is beautiful.

The scheme announced by the BJP Government is a recipe for scandal. Traders are raking in on the spot profit of 100 per cent. Last week at a government auction at Satna, traders purchased onions at the rate of Rs 2.75 per kg. Within a few hours they reportedly sold it for Rs 6 a kg. They rebooked the two railway racks of onions, sending the bogies from Satna to Varanasi. The traders made a killing of Rs 1.69 crore within a few hours!

Traders smelled a windfall as soon as Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced, in the wake of a debilitating farmers’ agitation, a scheme to purchase onions at Rs 8 a kg as against the prevailing wholesale market price of Rs 2 to Rs 4 per kg. Many a trader sold their stock, purchased at cheaper rates, through farmers.

Then they started the game of recycling the sold onions to government. This week Ujjain collector seized 160 quintals of onions that could be part of the recycling racket. At Shivpuri traders purchased onions at the rate of Rs 300 a quintal from open market and then sold it, through farmers, at the rate of Rs 800 to government.

When the government had announced the largesse for the farmers, the official estimate of total onion production in the state stood at 32 lakh quintals. By the time it realised that it was being taken for a royal ride by unscrupulous elements and banned entry of onion from other States, the procurement estimate had doubled to 80 lakh quintals. Yes sir, an increase of 250 percent in production estimates!

Onion crisis has been in the making a long time. Land under onion in MP doubled after prices skyrocketed in 2010-11. It created a glut in the market, leading to price crash for three consecutive years. The government intervened, purchasing onions for the first time last year. This year, as agitating farmers started throwing onions on roads, the government announced a minimum support price. It was an attempt by a desperate Chouhan to salvage his pro farmers image that had taken a beating in the wake of killing of half-a-dozen farmers in police firing at Mandsaur.

There are serpentine queues stretching for miles in front of purchase centres. Rains have arrived even as thousands of tractor trolleys are waiting for their turn that may take, at time, up to 10 days. Farmers have resorted to road blockades to protest such delays in Ujjain and Indore districts. According to an estimate more than four lakh quintals of onions, worth Rs 32 crore, is lying in open tractor-trolleys. In Shivpuri, Bhopal, Guna, Ratlam, Jaora and Khandwa thousands of quintals of onions has already got spoiled in rains. The Government has made it clear that it would not buy spoiled onions. As queues become longer and tempers frayed, a panicked government has rushed senior officials from state secretariat to supervise Operation Onion at field level.

People are supposed to learn from their mistakes. But governments seem to revel in its mistakes. Last year, the MP Government had to throw away most of the onions it had purchased as it got spoiled due to poor storage facility. The government ended up suffering a loss of about Rs 100 crore. This year too it seems determined to throw away onions as it has not made arrangements for adequate storage space.

The government is wearing the loss to public exchequer as a badge of honour. “Last year we suffered a loss of Rs 100 crore in onion purchase,” said Food Minister Omprakash Dhurve, “this year we are ready to suffer a loss of Rs 500 crore.”

But this sacrifice has brought Chouhan to a different pedestal in the eyes of his admirers. “Shivraj Singh is an incarnation of God,” said Agriculture Minister Gaurishankar Bisen, lauding the Chief Minister’s decision to purchase onions despite a loss to state exchequer. Economists fail when it comes to celestial matters.

Article published in DB Post of 25th June 2017

(Email: nksexpress@gmail.com. Tweeter handle: @nksexpress.)


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