Centre flays Bihar's 'sloppy' approach on urea distribution

The Centre today slammed the Bihar government for its 'sloppy' approach over lifting of urea and poor delivery system for its distribution among farmers.
Union Minister of State for Chemical and Fertiliser Hansraj Gangaram Ahir today said that despite providing surplus amount of urea to Bihar, the state government failed to ensure supply on time to farmers.
He said the 'sloppy' approach of the Bihar government could be understood from the fact that it failed to lift urea from rake point for as long as 50 hours.
Because of this delay, the Centre has to make extra payment to railways, Ahir said.

There are 12 rake points of urea in Bihar and all of them were facing similar problems.
The minister said though the Bihar government had sought 70,000 metric tonnes of urea in the fiscal 2014-15, the Centre provided it 1.12 lakh metric tonnes of urea, a surplus of 42,000 metric tonnes.

The state has poor distribution network for urea as there was no director to oversee the delivery, he alleged claiming "this is encouraging black marketing of urea".
Ahir said the Centre has decided to expand the capacity of Barauni Fertiliser and also modernise the plant to meet the need of Bihar from it.

Accompanied by Darbhanga Lok Sabha member Kirti Azad, the union minister was here in connection with the launch of insurance schemes of the Narendra Modi government.