Following standardization of underweight urea bags, the dept. of agriculture has revoked the ban imposed on the sale of urea bags to farmers. The problem got highlighted after the Hindu carried a story on the issue.
Earlier, govt. officials had held a meeting with representatives of KRIBHCO – the cooperative body that imported the fertiliser and packed it in 50 kg bags and Tamil Nadu cooperative marketing federation that sold the imported fertiliser, to seek a solution to the problem.
Checking squads formed by the dept. had inspected primary cooperative credit societies and private dealers throughout the district to see if the urea bags stored by them were underweight. When the checking squads detected the scam, the dept issued ”stop sales” order.
It included 75.30 tonnes of underweight KRIBHCO urea bags with 17 private dealers and 87.60 tonnes with 36 Primary Agricultural Co-operative Credit Societies. ‘Stop sales’ orders were also issued to 192.45 tonnes stocked in the TANFED fertilizer godown.
Subsequent raids by the inspection team took the quantum of discrepant urea bags to 739 tonnes that included 192.45 tonnes with TANFED, 390.65 tonnes with Primary Agricultural Co-operative Credit Societies and 155.90 tonnes with private dealers.