Only local purchase of supplies for tribal children

NAGPUR: Cornered by the food scam, which involved a group of traders bagging tenders for ration supply to tribal children through unscrupulous means, the state government has now issued orders for local purchase of supplies in the areas concerned. Orders have been issued to provide locally procured ration to children in tribal areas. This may help in preventing fudging of rates, as happened in the scam when the firms bagged contracts to supply food items at steep rates, said a source in state's ministry of tribal affairs.
A decision to have a single agency to route the supplies will be taken soon. The items will be purchased at uniform rates to be supplied through the sole agency, which could be a state-level consumer cooperative federation. However, for the time being, local purchases will have to be made, said the source.
In 2010, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had charge-sheeted two persons - Rajan Shankar Jadhav, a director in Allied Protein Food Private Limited, and Ulhas Parasmal Pagaria, a city-based businessman running M/s Paras Foods - for allegedly conniving with officials of Maharashtra State Cooperative Tribal Development Corporation and National Consumer Cooperative Federation for rigging contracts to supply food to tribal schools at overpriced rates. A Supreme Court report had accused Pagaria of floating a dummy self-help group in his wife's name to corner the supply contract. Jadhav is also alleged to having formed a Mahila Mandal (women's association) in his wife's name. The modus-operandi helped them to gain a monopoly in the supply business which was otherwise open to only SHGs and similar women's organizations.