Govt to sell 6,300 tonnes of 'expired' Antyodaya sugar

Jaipur: The food and civil supplies department has decided to sell tonnes of sugar procured for distribution under Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) in auction. Officials said these packs of sugar were lying in govt godowns and are past their use-by dates.

“Around 6,300 metric tonnes of sugar, procured by the earlier BJP government in 2017 and the former Congress government in 2019, were lying in the district godowns of the department for years.

Subsequently, the expiry dates of the packs are over and now government has only option to sell them in auction at a much lower price,” said a senior official of the food and civil supplies department.

Principal secretary of the department, Bhaskar Atmaram Swant, told TOI that this decision has been recently taken at the corporation level, but there is one “major step” to be followed before the process for auction.

“We are not going to auction the entire stock available with us for AAY. It has been decided to segregate the stock that is in edible condition and that which is not. After segregation, we are going to auction the one that is not in edible condition,” Sawant told TOI.

Officials said there are various reasons why such a huge stock of sugar – procured under AAY – remained unutilized. In 2017, soon after the government procured around 1,700 metric tonnes of sugar, the union government withdrew this scheme for a few months.

“Keeping a few factors in mind, government procures items for distribution through public distribution system. These factors include present price of the commodity and availability of the commodity over a certain period of time. The procurement quantity decided by the government often doesn’t match with the demand. This was a typical case where procurement quantity was more than the actual demand. So, a huge quantity of sugar remained unutilised till date,” added Sawant.

Although in Feb 2024, the Union government has extended the sugar subsidy for AAY families for two years, in Rajasthan none of the fair price shops are distributing sugar under the AAY. At present there are 6,11,061 AAY cards in Rajasthan.

“For the last four years, the state government is not providing us with sugar to be distributed under the AAY. We had sent them repeated request to resume the AAY distribution process. As per the scheme, each AAY family is entitled to get one kg of sugar a month,” said Dimple Sharma, state president and national vice-president of All India Fair Price Shop Dealers Federation.