The procurement status of 70 lakh metric tonnes of paddy ready for the current yasangi (rabi) season is in limbo due to a dispute between the state and central governments.

A delegation of state ministers left for Delhi on Tuesday to meet Union ministers and officials at the Centre to demand 100 per cent procurement of boiled rice made out of paddy grown in Telangana in the rabi season, as was being done in Punjab.

The food cell on Sunday said 1.5 tonnes of rice, being smuggled in a van to Karnataka, have been seized.

The Adani Group has bought a closed rice-processing unit in East Burdwan, signalling that the Gujarat-headquartered industrial house led by chairman and managing director Gautam Adani is expanding its footprint in Bengal.

A whopping 1.53 lakh quintals of rice has been seized in vigilance raids in the State since 2019. However, Civil Supplies officials say it cannot be concluded that the seized rice was meant for the Public Distribution System (PDS).

Ahead of the second agriculture budget, which will be presented in the Assembly on Saturday, the Congress has suggested that the government roll out a new brand of rice, named ‘Kalaignar Rice’. The party’s suggestion seems to have caught the attention of Agriculture Minister MRK Panneerselvam. 

Karimanagr task force sleuths busted a Public Distribution System (PDS) rice illegal sale racket and arrested three persons on Sunday.

The police arrested two persons and seized seven tonnes of PDS rice and two luggage vans carrying the load on the outskirts of Gudupalle, close to Karnataka border, in the early hours of Sunday.

The Civil Supplies CID personnel have seized 500 kg of rice meant for public distribution system in Thanjavur Corporation limits from a middleman.

Shivaji University Kolhapur (SUK) will soon make a record of releasing two new varieties of non-basmati aromatic rice. Genetically improved mutants of Ajara Ghansal and Kala Jirga, two famous rice varieties have been researched by the researchers from the Botany department of SUK that can overcome the deficiency which earlier traditional ones had.