CHANDIGARH: Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has urged Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar to provide more railway racks to Haryana so that the wheat could be lifted immediately from the mandis to make space for more wheat arrival.

The Chief Minister was reviewing the ongoing procurement arrangements of wheat in the mandis of the State during the current rabi season with the officers of Food and Supplies Departments, here on Tuesday.
 
Talking over the phone with Pawar, Hooda asked him to ensure that 60 railway racks, which had already been allotted to the State Government by the Food Corporation of India for the month of May for lifting the wheat, should reach before May 15. He also urged him to raise the number of racks also.
 
Pawar assured the Chief Minister that sufficient number of railway wagons would be made available for lifting of wheat from the State and also congratulated the people, especially the farmers of Haryana, for providing more wheat in the central pool for the food security of India.
 
The Chief Minister assured Pawar that total wheat procurement may touch 52 lakh MTs and he apprised the Union Minister that 42.97 lakh metric tonnes of wheat has arrived in 362 mandies of the State so far and out of this, 42.66 lakh metric tonnes of wheat had been procured by the six Government procuring agencies.
 
Hooda said that procurement of wheat was 5.60 lakh MTs more than the procurement of entire season of 2006-07. He complimented the farmers of the State for growing bumper crops in their fields. He said that sufficient power and irrigation water was made available to the farmers of the State.