Hyderabad, September 20: After slapping cases against Kadapa mayor and YSR’s brother-in-law P Ravindranath Reddy for “illegal” transport of fertilisers from his Balaji Fertilisers in Kadapa district, the stage is now being set for suspension of licences of seven such plants, including Haritha in Nalgonda district owned by him.
The government has not yet acted in respect of his other three plants – Balaji Fertilisers and Maheswari Fertilisers in Kadapa district and Haritha in Rangareddy district (a smaller one than the Nalgonda unit). The charge against the seven companies is that they had supplied complex fertilisers (NPK) of substandard quality to farmers.
The agriculture department will continue investigation to ascertain whether these companies have obtained urea illegally. If the department gets any evidence to this effect, it can cancel the licences permanently. The officials say so far they have not obtained any such evidence against Ravindranath Reddy’s plants. Only in respect of Haritha, it has been proved that the NPK that it had supplied was of substandard quality.
The government, simultaneously, is bringing pressure on the Union Agriculture Ministry to take action against companies including IFCO and Krishak Bharathi Cooperative Limited (KRIBHCO), the premier companies that manufacture urea, for supplying it to the mixing plants directly despite the state government’s order to the contrary.
The government issued the order recently to ensure that urea, which is in high demand, is available to farmers.
The state needs about 9 lakh tonne of NPK which is being manufactured by the mixing plants.
For preparation of this fertiliser, the plants need 1.5 lakh tonne of urea. Of the 20 mixing plants in the state two have import permissions and others are procuring urea through various means.
The mixing plants could procure urea from anywhere, including dealers, till recently. But after the issue of the order by the government, purchase of urea by mixing plants even from dealers is illegal.
Ravindranath Reddy’s claim was that he had import permission and had procured urea before the restriction came into force in the middle of August.
He says that of the total 50,000 tonne of urea allocated to the mixing plants, he had got 19,000 tonne as against the mixing plants’ requirement of 1.5 lakh tonne per year.
–Agencies