Market committee officials in the dock

Sanjeev Kochhar / TNN / Feb 26, 2006, 02:53 IST

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Senior functionaries of a board in Haryana have realised how difficult it is to get a govt organisation moving.

CHANDIGARH: Senior functionaries of a board in Haryana have just realised how difficult it is to get a government organisation moving.
It has taken suspensions and chargesheeting of more than 180 market committee officials, including several secretaries, in less than a year and tightening of procedures for collection of market fee, to bring some semblance of order in the chaotic grain and vegetable markets of Haryana.
With 106 market committees, 178 sub yards, 175 purchase centres, 30 sabzi mandis, 25 fodder markets and 33 cotton mandis, and on top of that complicity of market committee officials with the commission agents, evasion of market fee had been quite rampant in the state.
A clampdown by the Haryana Agricultural Marketing Board over the past less than a year has, however, resulted in the market fee collections registering a significant increase of 11%.

The collections as on January 21, 2006 have been Rs 167 crore, compared to Rs 150 crore in the corresponding period last year.
Sources in the board said that among the measures taken to tighten the mechanism for market fee collections is the introduction of entry coupon system to reinforce the entry register, besides reducing the number of entry points to a mandi.
The board officials manning the entry points keep one coupon, the farmer keeps another to himself and the third is passed on to the commission agent for display on the stacks of grain.

The district level and divisional marketing enforcement officials also keep a watch on the movement of grain. A daily arrival report from each mandi is passed on to the board headquarters where senior officials regularly monitor the figures and step in wherever they detect discrepancies.
A system of benchmarking is also being maintained under which the estimated production figures of the agriculture
department for each crop are matched with the arrivals in the mandis, allowing a reasonable margin for damages, keeping back of crop by farmers for home use and sale of crop outside the state.
Targets for collection of market fee are also being fixed for market officials, which vary from crop to crop, the sources added.
The marketing board has made recoveries to the tune of Rs 1 crore on account of evasion of market fee so far this year.

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