Telangana: Rice Worth 100 Crore Misappropriated During BRS Rule

A major scam in the procurement and processing of paddy under the government scheme during the BRS rule has come to light. Rice worth Rs 100 crore, from paddy procured by the state government, was misappropriated in Nizamabad district with the help of BRS leaders, as per initial investigations.

“Errant rice millers diverted rice to the open market and misappropriated the funds. The millers were close to the BJP and BRS parties,” official sources said.

After the fraud came to light, the Congress government initiated action against the culprits. Police registered criminal cases against nine rice mill owners in the district, but no arrest has been made so far. Some rice millers are absconding. Usually, rice millers procure paddy from farmers directly or through middlemen to convert it to rice.

“As part of efforts to ensure minimum support price (MSP) to the farmers, the state government agencies procured paddy from them. Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies (PACS) played a key role in procuring the paddy and supplying it to the nearest rice mills. The process of handing over paddy and getting back rice is called Custom Milling of Rice (CMR),” officials explained.

For the CMR process, the government will pay the charges to the rice mills. If the paddy is procured in the Vaana Kalam (kharif) season, it should be returned as rice by the end of the season.

The cooperative department, the Civil Supplies department and the Civil Supplies Corporation jointly monitored the process. However, with the help of a few elected representatives, some rice millers did not return rice to the government agencies. Instead, they sold it in the open market and made money. To escape scrutiny, the rice millers paid bribes to officials as also BRS and BJP party leaders, it was alleged.

As per rules, if any rice miller defaulted in the matter of returning the rice under the CMR process, he should not be given the paddy for next season. But officials allotted paddy to defaulter rice millers also. As a result, each such rice miller misappropriated paddy/rice worth around Rs 5 to Rs 10 crore.

Initial investigations indicated that more than 30 rice millers were involved in major irregularities. Of these, six rice mills in Nizamabad district misappropriated as much as Rs 33.65 crore – by selling 97,582 quintals of paddy.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, a rice miller said several officials were involved in the racket. “They collected bribes for each quintal of paddy. Thus, around Rs 10 to Rs 20 crore went into the pockets of the officials and politicians as bribes,” he said.

“If the government now initiates action against the errant rice mills, a problem is that the worth of misappropriated paddy was more than the asset value of the rice mill. Even the auctioning of these mills would not help the government to recover the loss,” he said.

If the officials verify the stock position in rice mills, it would be found that a majority of the mills had defaulted on the paddy, he added.

Surprisingly, no rice miller has been arrested in this connection in Nizamabad district so far. Even individual names of the millers are not mentioned in First Information Reports (FIR). A few rice millers are absconding.

The role of district rice millers association is also suspect. Their involvement in the irregularities is all too clear, an official source said.

This article has been republished from The Deccan Chronicle.