Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president A Revanth Reddy on Thursday wrote an open letter to union minister for tourism and culture G Kishan reddy, demanding him to order a CBI inquiry into the role of chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and other important leaders of the state government in the “Custom Milling Rice (CMR) procurement scam.”
He alleged that huge amounts of irregularities were taking place in the paddy procurement and the supply of the CMR to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) by the state government. “Important leaders of the ruling TRS party had joined hands with rice millers and TRS party leaders are committing the paddy procurement scam running into hundreds of crores every year,” stated Revanth Reddy.
He said that the union minister is aware of the recent field level inspections conducted by the officials of the FCI from march 22, 2022 to March 24, 2022, and “shocking details” about the scam came to the fore during the inspection of the officials. “FCI officials found that 453896 bags of paddy allotted by the state government under CMR were missing from the godowns. The market value of the missing paddy was around Rs45 crores and the total quantity of the paddy was 226948 quintals,” he said.
He alleged that the scamsters were selling the rice allotted under the CMR category in the open market instead of supplying it to the FCI. He said that the FCI officials found that irregularities to the tune of 30 percent of the total allotted quantity were taking place across the state.
Reminding the statement of Kishan reddy that the state government had not yet supplied 8.34 Lakh metric tonnes or paddy to them so far, he said that the union minister also expressed doubts over the paddy scam while noting that the doubts raised by the minister have become a reality following the inquiry of the FCI officials. Referring to the findings of the FCI officials, he said a scam worth ₹400 crores would come to the fore if the inspection of all the 3200 rice mills was done by the FCI officials.
Revanth Reddy asked Kishan Reddy why his government was not initiating any action on the issue. He demanded the union minister inquire into all the CMR allocations made since the year 2014 and recover the public money from the rice millers after seizing their mills. He also demanded Kishan Reddy file criminal cases against all the TRS leaders involved in the scam and prove his commitment to the issue by fulfilling all their demands.