The conversion of paddy procured from the farmers into rice has landed many here in rice soup! Around 100 kgs of paddy is to give only 68 kgs of rice. And in Palamau this simple conversion ratio as set by the Government is disturbed. There is either no trace of paddy or the rice. The fingers of suspicions are thus large and varied.
Police executed warrant of seizure of the movable property of a rice mill owner in Hussainabad in Palamau. There is FIR against this rice mill owner who is absconding and police executed the warrant of seizure. This has been confirmed by SP AT Mathew and DC Pooja Singhal.
Officials of the three Government departments are under scanner. The first is the agricultural department. Palamau district agricultural department is to be concerned with the farmers, their agricultural fields, their paddy yields and quality of paddy. The other department is the co operative department. It monitors primary agricultural credit society (PACS). It is to procure paddy for conversion of it into rice.
The third most important department is the Palamau food and civil supplies department. It is an umbrella department and is to ensure the entire paddy procurement till its conversion into rice.
DC Singhal agreed that necessary vigil was not kept by any of these departments and as such paddy rice issue boiled down to a racket in which the rice mill in Hussainabad is blatantly found indulged in malpractice.
All this happened during the time when DC Pooja Singhal was on her maternity leave. Her long absence on this account led a total sagging of vigil and monitoring. In her latest Press briefing, she asked her officials as to how all this happened.
Around 17,000 MT paddy is under question. A sum of Rs 2.50 crore of the Government is at stake. The Palamau administration is trying to find out if the malpractice is intentional or just happened as none kept any watch and let the departments and PACS to do as it liked.
When asked that this paddy and rice racket has just found one rice mill owner paying through its nose while others are having jolly good time the DC retorted sharply ' The sword is on every one who is connected to it in any way or manner'.
Adviser K Vijay Kumar is keenly pursuing this case and there is no chance of this case getting any hushed up as it has become a big summer boil for the administration.
Sources said a somewhat identical thing had happened in other districts where the damage was controlled by projecting this story that farmers who gave their paddy and took money for it again came back and went back with their consignment of paddy and returned the sum too so a racket was thus aborted.
However, there are gaping holes in this story of damage control there in those districts but back here in Palamau the lid is off the paddy pockets and the DC is all out to track down the culprits of paddy and rice.