NEW DELHI: The central government’s auctions to provide pulses to the armed forces and the marginalized section of the population, worth more than Rs 4,600 crore, were rigged to benefit a few private mill owners as per a recent finding from the National Productivity Council (NPC), an autonomous research institute under the Union government.
In its findings, NPC had written in detail about the modus operandi of National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED) which rigged the auction method to benefit a selected few. The NPC had presented its preliminary findings on October 11, 2021, to a committee under the government of India which was overseeing the price stabilisation of pulses and other items and recommended that NAFED must scrap the auction process immediately. Despite that, the government allowed NAFED to auction 137,509 metric tonnes of pulses worth Rs 875.47 crore using the same method for two months.
In 2017, NAFED proposed to give away ready-to-cook pulses under various welfare schemes. For that, NAFED set up an auction platform where private mill owners could bid to win contracts to process raw pulses and deliver them to states. The NPC found that the terms of these auctions set by NAFED allowed a few private mill owners to fleece the government of tonnes of pulses and sell them at a profit in the open market, as well as allowing them to supply poor quality pulses. The standard process which was followed previously was that the government gives work contracts to the lowest bidder. But NAFED asked private mill owners to quote the highest out-turn ratio (OTR) to process raw pulses.