Madhya Pradesh to impose pulses stock limit on traders

After sugar, Madhya Pradesh is now planning to impose limit on stocks of pulses that a trader can build, to curb hoarding and check rise in prices, which have surged by up to 50 per cent in just four months.

“We are in the final stage of working out a formula to impose the stock limit on pulses. There are some issues about imposing the limit on the basis of population, which will be sorted out soon,” the state’s Food Minister (independent charge) Paraschandra Jain said.

However, pulse millers say such a proposal has already hit their business volume, and appealed to the state government that they be allowed at least three months to sell their current stocks before the limit is slapped.

“After the news spread that there would be a stock limit on pulses, our business slumped by as much as 75 per cent,” Madhya Pradesh Dal Mills Association President Suresh Agrawal said. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had directed states to take stringent measures against hoarding and black marketing. Rajasthan then imposed stock limits on all types of pulses under the Essential Commodities Act. Authorities in Madhya Pradesh had also seized sugar valued at Rs 2.5 crore in Indore and Gwalior just after that.