Big guns stranded as Uttaranchal defers Bill

A move to enact the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act has been shelved in Uttaranchal.

Official sources said it was very unlikely that the draft bill related to the APMC Act would be passed before the assembly elections.

Early this year, a sub-committee to the assembly approved a draft bill on the APMC Act and sent the same to the Cabinet for tabling it in the House.

Since the assembly elections are round the corner, sources said there would be no session of the House. This meant only a new government would decide the fate of the APMC Act in Uttaranchal, sources added.

Nevertheless, the government's reluctance in this regard has blocked top-notch companies like Reliance, ITC and Mother Dairy from entering the agriculture sector directly in Uttaranchal.

These companies were ready to invest Rs 400 crore in Uttaranchal through different proposals, an official of the Agriculture Department said.

Both Reliance and ITC have evinced interest in contract farming in Uttaranchal, for which the government has to pass the APMC Bill. Of the two, ITC has got a bulk purchase licences from the Uttaranchal government for about 25,000 tonnes of wheat procurement.

Reliance Agro is also likely to put up its proposal details for procuring both food grain and horticultural produce soon.

The APMC Act is expected to pave the way for the legitimate establishment of private mandis. Meanwhile, the bulk purchase licences will allow the corporate houses to buy directly from farmers in the run-up to the setting up of private mandis here.

The APMC Act contains provisions for setting up private mandis, enabling contract farming and the constitution of a regulatory authority to ensure a level playing field between the government-controlled and private mandis.

Private mandis will mean cutting out extra imposts such as the mandi cess and other charges, reducing final costs for consumers and buyers and allowing better gains for farmers.

In effect, the new APMC Act will mean direct purchase of commodities at market-defined prices by trading and corporate houses from farmers, either through individual purchase contracts or from farmer/consumer markets.

Currently, there are very few private markets in the country because under the APMC Act, only states are permitted to set up markets.