Congress leader Manoj Chwala, from the Alot constituency, and his accomplices were detained for allegedly looting fertiliser and impeding government work in Ratlam district, Madhya Pradesh, an official said.
On Thursday, the event took place at a government warehouse in the Ratlam neighbourhood of Alot town. Abhishek Tiwari, Superintendent of Police (SP) in Ratlam, stated that the action was taken as a result of the warehouse manager’s complaint.
“MLA Chawla and his associates misbehaved with the staff, obstructed government work, and provoked people to loot fertiliser by opening the shutter of the warehouse,” he said.
“According to the audit conducted after the incident, a total of 21 sacks of fertiliser and six sacks of other ingredients were found missing. An FIR has been registered against MLA Chawla and one of his associates, Yogendra Singh Jadon. The rest of the persons involved in the incident are being identified on the basis of video, and action will be taken against them accordingly,” SP Tiwari said.
He further said, “We took stock of the spot and found that there was no shortage of fertiliser in the district. In fact, around 29 metric tonnes of urea were distributed from the Alot centre before the incident, and around 890 metric tonnes of urea were distributed in the entire district. Besides, if there is any glitch in the online process, it is distributed via offline mode.”
However, MLA Chawla claimed that over the past two days, he had been receiving complaints from farmers on a consistent basis. Farmers waited in line, but they were not given fertiliser.
Acting on the complaint, I went to check at the warehouse, and the farmers claimed that black marketing of the fertilisers was going on. But the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and officials did not like my stand for the farmers, and a fake FIR was registered against me,” Chawla alleged.
He added further, ” I would like to tell them that they can lodge as many complaints as they can, but I will keep fighting for the farmers.”
Ratlam Collector Narendra Suryavanshi said, “It is an unfortunate incident. There is no shortage of urea in the district. There was a glitch in the server, but still, the fertiliser was distributed to around 150 farmers in offline mode.”