HYDERABAD, Feb 27: District Food Controller Masood Siddiqui and the office-bearers of the Atta Chakki Owners Social Welfare Association continue the blame game as the city reels from what is believed to be the worst shortage of wheat in recent years.
The food official claimed in a statement issued here on Wednesday that the association’s president Mohammad Jawaid Qureshi and joint secretary Mohammad Hanif Rajput were blackmailing him and issuing misleading statements to the media about a wheat shortage. Besides, they were no more elected office-bearers of the association because their term had expired, he said.
The DFC has also issued a show-cause notice to the association president which has been attached to the statement.
The notice mentioned the association’s president as owner of Jawaid Atta Chakki and warned that if he failed to reply within seven days of the issuance of the notice strict action would be taken against him and his food grain licence would be suspended.
Reacting to the statement, the chakki association’s president Mr Qureshi and joint secretary Mr Rajput said that they had written a letter to the official and sought details about the remaining wheat quota for the district and the details of the wheat given to chakkis (small flour mills).
But instead of giving a proper reply, the DFC had threatened the president Mr Qureshi he could suspend food grain licence of his Jawaid atta chakki if he failed to reply within seven days, they said.
They said the term of association would end on March 15 and, therefore, they were both still office-bearers and represented all chakkis of Hyderabad district.
They said that instead of giving a proper reply about the wheat quota allocated by the food department for January and February, the DFC was trying to drag them into an unnecessary and misleading blame game so that he could hush up reports of his corruption. The official was trying to create a rift among members of the association, they said.
If he was honest, he should come clean on the issue and disclose all details about the quota, they said. The DFC himself was involved in corruption and, therefore, he was accusing elected and respectable office-bearers of the association of blackmailing, they said.
They said the official was unwilling to share details of the quota with the media because he wanted to hide his corruption and because he himself was responsible for causing an artificial shortage of wheat in the district.
They feared that the food department might eat up the remaining quota of 17,460 bags out of a total of 55,000 bags of 100 kg because the chakki owners had received 37,540 bags till Feb 24. There were also reports that a number of challans were issued by the DFC office while the official was not there, they said.
They cautioned the remaining quota of 17,460 bags might lapse if it was not supplied by Feb 28 under the newly-introduced millstone-based policy.
Chakkis were selling flour at Rs36 per kilogram as per official price fixed by the government although they were buying 100kg wheat bag at Rs3,400 from the open market and at Rs2,800 from the food department.
The chakki-produced flour is being sold for Rs38 to Rs40 per kg in the open market against the official price of Rs36 and the roller mill-produced flour at Rs34.5 a kilo.
There are 236 chakkis in Hyderabad and seven roller mills. About 90 to 95 per cent people like to eat chakki-produced flour.