Server glitch delays cotton procurement across erstwhile Adilabad district

Left with no choice but to depend on private traders who quote considerably lower price than MSP, regret ryots

Adilabad: Cotton farmers continued to face inconvenience with the stalling of procurement of cotton produce at procurement centres caused by technical problems that arose in Aadhaar servers in different parts of erstwhile Adilabad district for the third day on Thursday.

The Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) had opened 24 centres under the jurisdiction of 18 agriculture market yards to procure the cotton produce in Adilabad, Mancherial, Kumram Bheem Asifabad and Nirmal districts.

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The process of cotton procurement was hit by technical glitches developed in Aadhaar servers, causing inconvenience to farmers. The farmers were forced to wait for a long time to sell their produce due to stoppage of the procurement by the CCI centres.

Scenes of farmers forming long queues of cotton-laden trolleys and tractors were witnessed at almost every CCI centre in erstwhile Adilabad district. The farmers were seen eating and sleeping in the vehicles, hoping their crop would be purchased soon.

The hapless farmers regretted that they were left with no choice but to depend on private traders who quote considerably lower price than minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 7,521 per quintal fixed by the corporation, incurring huge losses.

Those who could not afford to wait for long were now selling the produce to the traders for around Rs 6,500 per quintal, registering a loss of at least Rs 1,000 per quintal.

Similarly, the farmers who opted to wait at the centres are bearing additional charges imposed by the owners of the vehicles. They are ending up paying Rs 1,000 per day towards waiting charges. They stated that in sum, they were registering about Rs 2,000 per quintal. They lamented that growing the commercial crop caused huge losses this year.

CCI officials said steps were being taken to restore the server at the earliest. They stated that they could not disclose as to when the server would be restored. Officials of the Marketing Department said that efforts were being made to address the problem and to avoid inconvenience to the cotton growers.