Farmers' Plea In Kerala High Court Seeks Judicial Intervention To Revamp Paddy Procurement System

Justice Devan Ramachandran has directed the Competent Secretary of the Government to look through the petitioners' complaints "very carefully" and file a report indicating as to what action has been taken and what is proposed.

Some of the challenges faced by the farmers as alleged in their plea includes:

• lack of a comprehensive system for calculating the cost of production of paddy which leads to arbitrary fixation of Minimum Support Price and State Incentive Bonus. It is alleged that since the state has no mechanism to calculate paddy production costs, the farmers are facing huge losses every year;
• there is prolonged delay in collecting harvested paddy from farmers which leads to storage issues during the rainy season, leading to perishing and sprouting of paddy grains;
• delay in disbursement of payments to farmers due to lack of proper co-ordination between the government, Supplyco, banks;
• unscientific moisture limits for paddy;
• treating farmers as debtors for government owned money which in turn affects their credit score;
• non allotment of state fund in the budget for procuration of paddy;
• even after paddy procurement system is digitalized, it is alleged that e-tenders are not used by the government and Supplyco to procure paddy from private mill owners.

The petitioners allege that paddy cultivation in the State is diminishing due to lack of any reforms in the paddy procurement system for protecting the farmers rights.

“However, paddy cultivation system in the state has dwindled significantly. For instance, the paddy area in Kerala decreased by 77.6% from 1975-76 to 2021-22, with a substantial drop in Palakkad itself.”, the plea states.

Recently, the Court considered another batch of writ petitions filed by farmers citing delay in clearing paddy procurement dues. The Court had passed orders directing the government and Supplyco to disburse the payments to the farmers without delay.

The petition was moved by Advocates Aruna A and Jisha Shaji

The matter has been posted for further hearing on October 03.

Case title: WPC No. 30251 of 2023

Case number: K Mohanan V State of Kerala