Ludhiana:
Liquor has found shelter in a government warehouse in Punjab, a state where hundreds of crores worth wheat grains are rotting for lack of storage space.
The warehouse belongs to the Punjab Warehouse Corporation and officials claim it was first offered to the Food Corporation of India but the FCI said it does not need it.
So, to avoid losses it was rented out to a private player.
Gurnam Singh, District Manager of the Warehouse Corporation says, "This was a godown to store fertilisers. It's not safe to store wheat and rice here. Also nobody else said they needed the space."
Ashok Dhawan, a scientist at the Punjab Agricultural University disagrees. "You can clean the storage structures and if possible spray insecticide, and following clean storage and proper spray, you can store wheat. There is nothing wrong with it," he says.
In March, NDTV had brought you an exclusive report on 65 lakh metric tonnes of wheat lying in the open in Punjab, wheat grains worth Rs. 500 crore to Rs. 800 crore rotting. (
Read: Food grain rots in Punjab as prices soar)
Now, the harvest has begun and more wheat supplies are coming in.
Unless the government reclaims every bit of storage facility it has in the state, a criminal rot will set in yet again.