THANJAVUR: Paddy brought from other district to a DPC in Thanjavur was seized and two persons were detained on Saturday. Based on a tip-off that loads of paddy were being moved in from other districts to the DPC at Oomathanadu near Peravurani, Collector M Govinda Rao instructed Tashildar K Jayalakshmi to conduct an enquiry.
She reached found lorries with loads of paddy parked near the DPC. On inquiring, it was found that the consignment was brought from Tiruvannamalai. The officials seized about 256 paddy bags and the lorry. One Rathinam of Tiruvannamalai and Muniyan driver of the lorry were handed over to Sethubavachathiram police. It may be recalled that farmers in the district have been complaining about paddy from other districts being dumped in the DPCs. Govinda Rao, on Sunday, inspected DPC at Sundaraperumal koil near Kumbakonam. Sources in TNCSC said as many were 447 DPCs are functioning in the district and so far, 2.7 lakh tonnes of paddy has been procured from 59,037 farmers.
Why farmers oppose paddy from other dist in DPCs?
Paddy does not fetch a remunerative price in the open market in non-delta districts. Unscrupulous traders buy paddy from paddy from farmers at less price and sell it to DPCs in delta districts at the price fixed by the government. For this, they produce forged land documents from delta areas, allegedly in connivance of DPC staff.
Besides robbing delta farmers of money, this would result in wrong harvest data being collected by the government, which could prove detrimental to claiming compensation in case of crop failure.