Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar has directed the district collectors to set up control rooms at the district level to monitor the paddy procurement operations in the respective districts on a regular basis.
A special control room would be set up at the State to monitor the overall operations. The Chief Secretary held a teleconference with district collectors, additional collectors and senior officials of the agriculture department to take stock of the arrangements that were being made for procuring paddy from farmers. The teleconference follows instructions from Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to initiate steps on war footing and ensure that the district machinery was geared up for the task.
Mr. Somesh Kumar wanted the district collectors to convene a meeting with Ministers and senior officials for formulating an action plan for paddy procurement. Procurement centres should be opened immediately and elaborate arrangements should be made to ensure that farmers were not inconvenienced.
Collectors, additional collectors and senior officials should visit at least four procurement centres every day to see that there were no problems in procurement of paddy. He wanted more procurement centres to be set as compared with last year and a special officer should be appointed for every centre to monitor the progress of procurement. Focus should be on procurement of gunny bags under the supervision of the special officer.
Services of the agricultural extension officers should be utilised fully and steps should be taken to ensure that farmers secured minimum support price for their produce fixed at ₹1,960 a quintal. Officials concerned should immediately resolve any issue that was brought to their notice in the respective districts and arrangements should be made to transport the paddy procured from the farmers. He wanted reports relating to procurement to be submitted on a daily basis.
The Chief Secretary wanted the agriculture department officials to collect information pertaining to total sowing so that proper planning could be made for procuring the entire commodity. The support of the police and transport department officials should be enlisted to see that paddy from the neighbouring States did not enter the State.
