The Himachal Pradesh Agriculture Produce Procurement Portal has been launched on 11th October 2021 by Hon’ble Member of Assembly from Chintpurni, Sh. Balbir Singh in Una. Sh. Balbir Bagga, Chairperson, Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee, Una, Joint Director, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Panchayat Pradhan, District Informatics Officer, NIC Una, Deputy Director Agriculture, Una District Food and Supplies Controller, Una were present on the occasion.
The speakers thanked Sh. Jai Ram Thakur, Hon’ble Chief Minister, Sh. Varinder Kanwar, Hon’ble Agriculture Minister and Sh. Rajinder Garg, Hon'ble Food and Civil Supplies Minister for providing the facility of paddy procurement in the current season on Minimum Support Price in 4 Districts of Himachal Pradesh.
The Farmers can register online in the portal by linking their digitized land records and after verification by Revenue or Agriculture officials, they can check availability of procurement slots in different markets. These markets have been set up by Food Corporation of India who are procuring paddy from farmers in the State. This is the first time that online facility has been provided to farmers for crop procurement on MSP. After taking Date wise tokens, farmers need to take their produce to these Markets and get the Bill of Sale as per procedure. Accordingly, the FCI will transfer funds to farmers through electronic mode in their registered bank accounts.
The Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Himachal Pradesh is the nodal Department for procurement process. The Revenue and Agriculture Department officials can verify the farmers and their crop sown area to enable farmers to get Tokens for selling their crop. The FCI has software interface for Mandi operations to view date wise tokens, receive crop, generate Bill of sale, transfer funds to farmers and other MIS reports.
NIC Himachal Pradesh has developed the software for the procurement portal by integrating it with digitized land records so that authenticity of farmer is verifiable. The software is role based and MIS reports are available to different sets of users.