THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Vigilance on Thursday conducted a state-wide raid targeting the corrupt practices existing in the paddy procurement process of the Supplyco. Several serious irregularities were unearthed during the raids, which also brought to the fore the unholy nexus between the Supplyco paddy marketing officers, paddy quality assessment officers, agriculture officers, mill owners and farmers, inflicting huge financial loss to the exchequer.
Vigilance Director ADGP Manoj Abraham said they found that many farmers manipulate the records and fraudulently show that they are cultivating paddy in large areas and obtain minimum supporting price and other perks from the state government. This was being done with the assistance of corrupt agriculture officers, Supplyco staff, agents and mill owners. The farmers upload exaggerated records of the area of cultivation to Supplyco portal.
Since the real production is less as the cultivated land is less than what was shown on records, the help of mill owners is taken to adjust the stock deficit. The mills bring in cheap rice procured from other states and that is shown as produced by the farmer. They later buy this cheap rice from the farmers. The corrupt Supplyco and agriculture department staff facilitate this fraud and when the government transfers the perks and support price to the farmer, the amount is divided among the corrupt elements.
In Kizhuvilam in Chirayinkeezhu taluk and Karode in Neyyattinkara taluk, both in Thiruvananthapuram district, certain farmers were found to have uploaded exaggerated data on the area of cultivation and had received subsidy and other perks from the government on the basis of the exaggerated reports. Similar issues were reported from Edamulackal and Odanavattom in Kollam district and Kallara in Kottayam district.
Manoj Abraham said the raids will continue in the coming days to assess the full scale of corruption in the paddy procurement process and requested the public to share information on corruption on the toll-free number 1064 or on 8592900900/ 9447789100.