States blame Centre, but don't lift imported stocks at subsidised prices

NEW DELHI: The state governments may have till recently blamed the Centre for a sharp rise in prices of pulses, but on their part they have also shown little interest in lifting stocks of imported dal that the Union government offered at subsidised prices. Of the total 5,000 tonnes of arhar dal imported last year, around 500 tonnes is still lying in central pool.

Sources said even as the Centre is preparing a road map to go ahead with more imports of arhar and urad this year to tide over another looming shortage, the real concern remains on how to sensitise the states to act quickly. "We repeatedly wrote to states to assess their requirement and also lift the pulses that were imported. But few states such as Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh took interest," said a government official.

TOI has learnt that since the states had no mechanism of distributing dal to the people, they did not know what to do with the commodity after taking it from the Centre. Moreover, since the imported pulses offered by Centre were "unmilled" (unprocessed), states did not know how to dispose them.

"Both the Centre and states have to work together for distribution of imported dal and also crack down on any form of hoarding by traders. The coordination was better so far as seizing the illegal stocks last year. We need to have more dialogue and united effort this year when the demand and supply gap will be almost similar to that of 2015," the official said.

Meanwhile, an Intelligence Bureau (IB) report has indicated that around 1.51 lakh tonnes of imported dal shipped through seven ships till first week of January and out of this about 74,000 tonnes have been delivered to brokers. Another 14,000 tonnes have been shifted to warehouses.