Highway tax hindering urea transportation
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, May 17 2024: After spike in unauthorised taxation along the national highways by unlawful organisations since the May 3 conflict last year, no transporter showed up for the tender for transporting urea to the state.

As such, there are only 1.5 lakh bags of urea available with the Department of Agriculture for pre-kharif and kharif crops.

According to a source, the Department of Agriculture floats tender for lifting the state's quota of urea every year.

However, for the year 2024-25, no bidder showed up, thereby posing a huge problem on who would be bringing the urea up to Imphal.

In addition to exorbitant monetary demands by armed outfits .deplorable condition of the road which would affect earnings may be some factor for the transporters not joining the tender bid.

Presently, the Agriculture Department has around 1.5 lakh urea bags in stock out of which 10,800 bags may be used for growing pre-kharif crops in Bishnupur, Thoubal, Imphal West, Imphal East and Kakching districts, while farmers are likely to widely use the urea to grow kharif crops from June onwards, the source informed.

The source continued that in a year, the state is allocated around 15,500 MT of urea for pre-kharif and kharif crops.

For kharif crops, around 4 lakh bags of urea (45kg) are required.

As such, there is a need to draw around 2.5 lakh urea bags for the farmers of the state while taking the present stock into consideration.

The required urea bags are to be drawn before the monsoon season and thus, are drawn every year from the month of April onwards.

However, questions have been raised on whether the urea bags can be drawn, with the timeline already over mid of May.

The Ministry, on its side, has notified the monthly allocations to the state government.

Although the allocated quantity is 15,500MT, the urea cannot be lifted at any given time.

Thus, the monthly allocations lapsed in April.

While the Department discussed the option of holding another tender, the higher authority suggested for continuation with the earlier transporter agency.

However, the transporter refused to lift the goods on the previous rate and requested the department to increase the rates.

Following this, the Department forwarded the matter to the higher authority for discussion, the source added.

Amid this, to prevent farmers from facing shortage of urea, the Department has submitted a proposal to the Agriculture commissioner to distribute 13,000 MT of urea from the state's allocation to private dealers.

This will help the private dealers in distributing the urea to the farmers in time.

Additionally, as the private dealers already have their own distribution networks, it would help in drawing and distribution of urea in required places.

However, as the private dealers are being utilised due to constraint of time and place, the price of a urea bag will be increased from the subsidised rate of Rs 266.8 set by the Agriculture Department.

Nonetheless, the price increased would still be within reasonable range, the source conveyed.

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