The Maharashtra government on Monday allowed crop procurement centres in Amravati to work in offline mode for registration and other formalities after several thousand farmers crowded them over the last 24 hours alleging miscommunication and mismanagement.
They said an "official" message went viral on social media about the start of chickpea procurement from 7am but on reaching there found several facilities had either not got any such order or were poorly managed.
Police personnel had to be deployed at some of the centres, located in Dhamangaon Railway, Nandgaon Khandeshwar and Chandur railway talukas, to avoid any untoward incident rising out of the distress caused to farmers, officials said.
Later in the afternoon, Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the process of registration and other formalities at these procurement centres is done in online mode, but due to the extraordinary circumstance caused by the crowding of farmers, a directive has been given for offline mechanism.
As per farmers who had assembled at one of these centres, a letter from National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED), which oversees such procurement, about start of registration of farmers desirous of selling their produce beginning from 7am on Monday had gone viral on social media.
Some procurement centres did not get orders to start the process, while other that did were poorly managed and chaotic, the farmers further alleged. Meanwhile, officials said the number of farmers at these centres is so huge that crowding continued through the day despite the offline mechanism assurance from Fadnavis.
