High Court asks Centre to reply over alleged wheat scam in two weeks

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought a response from the Centre on a PIL filed against the import of wheat at an inflated price, which is being alleged as a wheat scam.

New Delhi, Sept 12 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought a response from the Centre on a PIL filed against the import of wheat at an inflated price, which is being alleged as a wheat scam.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice M K Sharma and Justice Sanjeev Khanna directed the Government to file its reply within two weeks.

Seeking the court's intervention over the Centre's decision to place an order to purchase 5.7 lakh Metric Tonnes (MT) of wheat at 325-dollar per MT with three foreign firms in the month of July, weeks after it rejected a 263-dollar per MT bid, the PIL also seeks a CBI probe into the entire matter.

Advocate A K Thakur, who filed the petition, said that the reasons for such a "shocking, sudden and strange development" are not known to him or even to the public in general.

According to the petition, the lowest bid of 263 dollars per MT was rejected by the government, which stated that the bidding price was too high.Suddenly, within 10 days of rejecting the bid of 263-dollar, the Government changed its mind and ordered the import of 5.7 lakh MT of wheat at 325 dollars per MT, by placing the order with three foreign firms in July, the petition states.

The Ministry of Agriculture came to know that there was a buffer stock of only 129 lakh MT of wheat as against the required buffer stock of 171 lakh MT that it normally need to maintain, thereby leading to a deficit of 42 lakh MT.

In August, the Centre placed another order for nearly 8 lakh MT of wheat at a whopping price of 390 dollars per MT.

The petition also states that foreign sellers are getting almost twice the price for a quintal of wheat as compared to the Minimum Support Price (MSP) offered to the farmers in the country.

The MSP for wheat is Rs 850 per quintal and that offered to the foreign sellers is about Rs.1600 per quintal, which is more than 88 percent of the MSP per quintal.

"This amounts to an unequal and unjust treatment towards the Indian Farmers which is violative of Article 14 of the Constitution of India. Besides that procurement at such a high price has direct impact on the exchequer of the State," the petition claims.The petition will urges the Court to issue the appropriate writ, order or direction from both the Government in respect of the transactions in question.

The next hearing of the case is scheduled for October 3.

ANI