Chennai: Accusing the TVK government of being lethargic in tackling inflation and lacking seriousness in handling essential commodities, AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami alleged that 400 metric tons of onions procured through the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) had gone missing as they had neither been delivered for distribution in fair price shop nor returned to NAFED.
The rotten onions were at the Korukkupettai depot of NAFED as the State government had rejected the entire stock and cancelled the order after more than 20 percent of the 400 tonnes were found to be rotten and 50.2 percent did not adhere to the size specification of 45 mm, an official press release said on Tuesday to explain the government position on the controversy created by the AIADMK.
Palaniswami, in a social media post on Tuesday, alleged that the onions had got spoiled as they were not unloaded for the trucks in the past three days. That was the fourth batch of onions procured by the Tamil Nadu Consumer Cooperative Federation (TNCCF) from north India following a spurt in the prices of the essential commodity in the open market.
The first three batches of onions were sold to the public through fair price shops at a rate of Rs 35 per kilo after State Cooperation Minister V Karthik inaugurated the scheme aimed at controlling the prices of onions on September 3.
Now the fourth batch of onions, weighing 400 tons, has created a political controversy with the AIADMK accusing the government of being clueless on providing essential commodities to the people. Palaniswami had even mocked the TVK government saying that supply of essentials was not like a film shoot in which a second take was possible to rectify the mistakes in the first take.
So far, through the first three phases of the supply of onions through fair price shops the cooperative department had sold 2380.92 metric tons of onions completely and there was no sale of onions in ration shops now, the official press release said and clarified that the 400 metric tons rotting at the Korukkupettai depot belonged to NAFED and not the TNCCF.
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