Leakage of subsidised foodgrains in MP

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Bhopal, July 28: Procurement of foodgrains and its distribution through fair price shops in Madhya Pradesh was weak and deficient, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India said.

''Operation of fair price shops was mired with deficiencies and monitoring mechanism was weak and ineffective. Evaluation report revealed that leakage of subsidised foodgrains was 54.48 percent.

Monitoring and vigilance mechanism was not effective'', the CAG report (civil) of Madhya Pradesh government for 2005-06, which was presented in the Assembly on Thursday, said.

The government's food management strategy towards ensuring food security involves procurement of foodgrains at minimum support price from the growers, its storage, handling, movement and allocation for eventual distribution to targetted population for ensuring foodgrain availability at affordable price at micro-level.

''System of procurement and distribution was found to be weak and deficient'', the CAG said.

Wheat procuring districts were required to transport surplus stock of wheat to the needy districts directly from procuring centres, but instead, foodgrains were stored at intermediary locations during 2003-05 resulting in avoidable expenditure of Rs 2.67 crore for local transportation, handling and interest.

Reserved storage space remained vacant resulting in loss of Rs 24.32 lakh and movement of wheat through longer and circuitous route also resulted in avoidable loss of Rs 45.27 lakh.

''There were cases of procurement of substandard quality of foodgrains. Avoidable expenditure of Rs 48.56 lakh was incurred towards bank commission'', the report said, adding ''In distribution of foodgrains, it was noticed that the issue of ration cards was far in excess and the foodgrains were distributed below the prescribed scale''.

The Madhya Pradesh Civil Supplies Corporation neither refunded Rs 68.15 crore accumulated on account of double margin nor adjusted the same in subsidy claims that were preferred for reimbursement, the report added.

UNI

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