Chief Secretary Suresh Chandra Mahapatra, reviewing the progress of farmers’ registration for paddy procurement with district Collectors on Monday, directed the officials that no genuine farmer should be deprived of selling paddy to Government during the Kharif marketing season (KMS) 2021-22. He also asked the Collectors to form sufficient numbers of joint verification teams involving field-level officers from the concerned departments for hundred-per cent field verification of the actual farmers and their crop areas.
He ordered to prepare a final list of all genuine farmers for paddy procurement by weeding out the possibilities of fake crop areas, registration and sealing the scope for entry of unscrupulous middlemen into the system. The field verification would be combined with verification of actual land record, land category (kisam), crop area, type and source of irrigation, bank details, mobile number of farmers, etc. The paddy-cultivated area would also be cross verified with satellite data collected through the ORSAC. After registration and field verification, SMSs would be sent to the farmers regarding the extent of the cultivated land registered for procurement. Payment to the farmers would be done through their bank accounts and all payments would be integrated with the online public financial management system (PFMS).
Principal Secretary Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Vir VikramYadav said an interactive voice recording system (IVRS) would handle farmers’ queries regarding registration and procurement. Toll-free number 1967 would receive the telephonic grievances of farmers. Utmost care would be taken to redress the grievances within 24 hours. The field verification would be completed by September 7, digitised data updating by PACS would be over by September 18 and master list of all genuine farmers and sharecroppers would be generated by September 30. Yadav informed that for KMS 2021-22, total 2,857 societies were enlisted by July 15. And by end of July, 1.74 lakh farmers were registered afresh.