Opposition also claimed that while the DAP requirement for Rabi season in Haryana was estimated at around 3 lakh metric tons, the supply so far had been only around one-third of the demand. (File) Members of the Opposition on Tuesday raked up the “shortage of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and urea fertilizers” across the state during the Haryana Assembly’s Winter session, and claimed that the state government was threatening to “upset the plans of farmers for sowing of Rabi crops”.
On Tuesday, the issue was raised by several Congress MLAs, led by Kiran Choudhry and INLD’s Abhay Chautala.
However, the state government assured the House that there was no shortage of either DAP or urea fertilizer and “adequate stocks were available”.
The Opposition questioned the BJP-JJP government and said that the state was denying any shortage but was failing to explain away why long queues of farmers were being seen lining up to purchase the fertilizers or why the fertilizers had to be distributed to farmers through police stations.
Congress MLAs Kiran Choudhary, Shispal Singh, Mamman Khan, Bishan Lal, Aftab Ahmed, Jagbir Singh Malik, Chiranjeevi Rao, Geeta Bhukkal, and INLD’s lone MLA, Abhay Singh Chautala, had given Calling Attention notice and said that panic has gripped farmers across Haryana with a severe shortage of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP), urea and other fertilizers, which are basic nutrients for Rabi crops, threatening to upset their plans for sowing of Rabi crops, especially that of wheat and mustard.
The Opposition pointed out the long queues of farmers wanting to buy DAP outside the offices of primary agriculture cooperative societies and other dealers in several districts — including Charkhi Dadri, Mahendragarh, Nuh, Rewari, Karnal, Ambala, Kurukshetra, Bhiwani, and Hisar. They also claimed that while the DAP requirement for Rabi season in Haryana was estimated at around 3 lakh metric tons, the supply so far had been only around one-third of the demand. “If there is no shortage of DAP then why was it distributed through police stations. The government is lying. The fact that raids were conducted clearly indicated that black marketing is being done,” Congress MLA Jagbir Singh Malik said.
Leader of Opposition, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, too, questioned the government over the hardships that the farmers were facing over the alleged shortage of fertilizers.
However, Haryana agriculture minister JP Dalal, countered the allegations and said, “Till now about 6.93 lakh metric tonnes (MT) of urea, 2.82 lakh metric tonnes of DAP, more than 1 lakh tonnes of SSP, more than 41,000 metric tonnes of NPK was available, out of which 6.24 lakh metric tonnes of urea, 2.60 lakh metric tonnes of DAP, 79,000 metric tonnes of SSP, 38,661 metric tonnes of NPK have been provided to the farmers in the state. In 22 districts, 61 complaints were received, 157 show cause notices were issued, 88 licences were suspended, and 20 FIRs were registered. Besides this, 1685 teams have conducted continuous raids to curb black marketing. The consumption of DAP in the last Rabi season was 2.58 Lakh MT whereas, during the current season a quantity of 2.57 Lakh MT has been made available up to December 15, 2021, to the farmers, which was at par with last year’s consumption. Further, other sources of phosphatic fertilizers — like SSP and NPK — were also made available in much more quantity than last year (SSP more than two times and NPK around 5 times). Thus consumption of total phosphatic fertilizer was 3.73 lakh metric tonnes up to December 15, 2021, against 3.01 Lakh MT in the last year during the same period. Similarly, the sale of urea fertilizer was 5.88 lakh metric tonne during last year, whereas, it is 5.74 lakh metric tonne during the current Rabi season which indicates that this year the supply to the farmers is almost the same. As of today, the state has a urea stock of 55828 MT, and additionally about 50,000 MT urea fertilizer is likely to arrive in the next 4 days. The Government of India has further announced to supply about 1,25,000 MT of urea by the end of this month.”
“Major Rabi crops have been sown with sufficient fertilizer as required at the time of sowing. In this Rabi season, the mustard crop has been sown in a 7.6 Lakh hectare area (about 19 lakh acres) against 6.1 Lakh hectare (about 15 Lakh acre) sown last year. Likewise, wheat has been sown in 22.9 lakh hectare area (about 57 Lakh acres) against 23.3 lakh hectares (about 58 lakh acres) sown last year. This clearly indicates that the sowing of wheat and mustard crops have not been hampered adversely due to the shortage of any fertilizer,” Dalal added.
Referring to the long queues of farmers at several places, Dalal said, “During the purchase of fertilizer at the sale point, the queues at few places were not because of shortage or non-supply of fertilizer rather it takes some time to update the data on PoS machine (Point of Sale machine). The system asks for Aadhaar Card and thumb impression. Government of India has started IFMS (Integrated Fertilizer Monitoring System) since 2018-19 which demands sale through PoS mandatory so that real-time sale and stock data can be captured at the national level,” Dalal said.
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