High Court seeks detailed report on DPCs

The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court on Tuesday directed the state to submit a detailed report in response to a plea seeking to set up adequate procurement centres for paddy.

KK Ramesh of Madurai in his petition, which came up for hearing before a division bench of Justices Pushpa Sathyanarayana and P Velmurugan, said that he had already raised the issue of less number of paddy procurement centres last year and sought the court’s intervention to ensure adequate number of procurement centres in the interest of farmers.

The bench felt that the issue of the existence of DPCs to protect the agricultural produce appeared to be cropping up again and again while the government was firm that actions had been taken in the farmers’ interest.

After hearing both sides, the bench also asked why details like names of farmers and cropped area were not properly maintained in the land register or revenue records. Further, the bench also sought to know whether actual farmers participated in the procurement of paddy or middlemen and it was not certain on several occasions.

The bench wondered whether guidelines were being followed in the process. The bench then asked if there were farmer members in the paddy procurement committee and cited as per norms, each committee should have two farmers apart from other members. The bench then directed the state to furnish details on action taken to open adequate number of DPCs