HYDERABAD: The Civil Supplies department, under the leadership of Civil Supplies Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy, is cracking the whip on rice millers who are defaulting on supply of custom milled rice (CMR) to the government in a bid to recover dues of Rs 1,438 crore.
The department is now taking steps to put all the registration related transactions such as property sale, lease, GPA on rice mills on hold to make the defaulter accountable.
In one such incident, the department through district collector put the registration related transactions pertaining to three rice mills on hold. These rice millers in question have defaulted on paddy supply worth over Rs 200 crore. As per the custom milling agreement, the millers are legally bound to deliver CMR to civil supplies corporation/FCI within a stipulated time.
“The mills in Suryapet district — Raghu Ram Inds, Santosh Industries and Sri Venkateshwara Rice Industries — have received paddy for custom milling during the 2022-23 Kharif season, 2022-23 Rabi and 2023-24 Kharif but failed to deliver rice worth more than Rs 200 crore in breach of Custom Milling Agreement,” said BS Latha, additional collector, Nalgonda district.
As per clause No 31 of CMR agreement, the rice millers, who were entrusted the paddy for CMR, shall not dispose off their movable/immovable property, rice mills, without the knowledge of the collector to the extent of value of paddy held by them under CMR.
“Under the above said circumstances, in order to ensure that the State government property is recovered, it is requested not to allow transactions against the properties held in the names of mill directors, partners and their family members or lease holders,” the additional collector’s order read.
It may be mentioned here that the state government has already recovered Rs 668 crore from rice millers and another Rs 1,438 crore is pending. The department officials are hopeful that with the initiative by the government the pending dues will be recovered soon.