Procurement portal sparks protests

Farmers in Haryana blocked highways on April 11 as a fight over wheat procurement moved from mandis to roads. (hindustantimes.com) Farmer groups under the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha held dharnas at toll plazas from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., while Bharatiya Kisan Union leaders also reported road blockades in several districts. Protesters said a new online portal, bank-account issues and fresh verification rules were slowing wheat sales. (hindustantimes.com, theweek.in) The Haryana government says the changes are meant to check fraud in state-backed crop purchases. Chief minister Nayab Singh Saini said the state now uses a three-tier crop-verification system so the grain brought to a procurement center matches the crop a farmer registered earlier. (hindustantimes.com) That system adds Aadhaar-based biometric checks, portal registration and vehicle recording at mandis, according to reports on the new rules. Farmers have said those steps are too cumbersome during the peak rabi marketing season, when wheat arrivals need to move quickly. (indianexpress.com, tribuneindia.com) The dispute is about access to the minimum support price system, the government channel that buys crops at a fixed floor price. When registration, identity checks or portal errors interrupt that process, farmers can be left waiting in mandis with harvested grain and transport costs piling up. (hindustantimes.com, indianexpress.com) A parallel shift is underway in Uttar Pradesh, where the state has made the Kisan Pehchan Patra, or Farmer ID, mandatory for agriculture and allied schemes and for selling crops at minimum support price centers. The order links benefits to the state’s digital farmer registry under AgriStack. (hindustantimes.com, upfr.agristack.gov.in) Hindustan Times reported that Uttar Pradesh set April 30 for registration and May 15 for enforcement, and the Times of India reported the state had enrolled about 75% of farmers before a registration drive from April 6 to April 15. That means a large share of procurement and subsidy access in India’s biggest farm states is being tied to digital identity and database matching at the same time. (hindustantimes.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com) Saini said Haryana has appointed nodal officers in each mandi and that senior officials are monitoring procurement, while opposition parties and farmer leaders say the state should remove the new conditions or pause them for the current season. The next test is whether governments can keep anti-fraud checks in place without turning the procurement gate itself into the bottleneck. (hindustantimes.com, hindustantimes.com)