The Bengal government has started lobbying in New Delhi to ensure that the Food Corporation of India buys at least 3 lakh tons of additional rice so that the state can procure 5 lakh tons of extra paddy directly from farmers ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

“The state food and supplies department has already sold 50,000 tons of rice to the FCI which will buy another 50,000 tons. We want to sell at least two lakh tons more to the central agency so that more paddy farmers could be provided with minimum support price of Rs 1,750 a quintal,” said a senior state government official.

The state government needs around 36 lakh tons of rice annually to run cheap foodgrain schemes for financially weaker sections. For this purpose, the state buys about 52 lakh tons of paddy directly from farmers against an average annual production of 160 lakh tons.

“If the state can sell 3 lakh tons of paddy to the FCI, approximately 1 lakh more farmers could be brought under the paddy procurement net. The state government is offering a much higher price compared to current market price of paddy. The market price of paddy is hovering around Rs 1,350 to Rs 1,400 a quintal against the government’s MSP of Rs 1,750,” said the senior government official.

Sources in the state food and supplies department said selling rice to the FCI at this time of the year was a bit difficult as the Centre usually fixed the FCI’s procurement quota for different states in the September-October period.

“It was agreed at the food cabinet meeting with all states in Delhi in September last year that the FCI would buy around 12 lakh tons of rice from Bengal. Selling 3 lakh tons of additional rice to the central agency at this point of time requires lobbying,” said the state official.

However, sources said the state was lobbying successfully to sell additional rice to the FCI since last year when the central agency had purchased more than 1 lakh tons of rice. The state was urging Delhi to buy additional rice from Bengal to supply grains to neighbouring states like Jharkhand and Sikkim.

“We have promised good quality rice. We hope we can achieve the target of selling 3 lakh tons of rice extra to the FCI as the agency did not refuse our request so far,” said a source.