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AHMEDABAD, NOV 11: The deadlock continued for the second day on Wednesday between Saurashtra Oil Millers Association (Soma) and Gujarat cabinet sub-committee over `restrictions' on movement of groundnut and groundnut oil out of the state.
The bone of contention is the `restriction' which makes it statutory for the traders/millers to get a permit in advance 48 hours before the transhipment of the commodity.
While SOMA threatened to close their mills if the government refused to lift the restriction, the state industries minister Suresh Mehta, who headed the seven-member sub-committee, refused to budge under pressure.
The talks between SOMA and the cabinet sub-committee, lasting over two hours at Gandhinagar on Tuesday, remained inconclusive as both the sides stuck to their grounds. Strangely, the State cabinet, which religiously held its weekly meeting every Wednesday, cancelled it at the eleventh hour as `there is no agenda'.
The Saurashtra region of Gujarat, comprising six districts, produced about aquarter of the country's total groundnut. Soma insisted that Gujarat was the only state which imposed such a restriction and it only bred corruption. It claimed that 40 to 50 per cent of the groundnut or oil was illegally sent out of the state, mostly to Mumbai. And, since the groundnut oil produced in the state is not allowed to be sent out, a large stock of groundnut remains unsold, resulting in farmers getting less prices.Soma claimed that the farmers were now getting far less prices than Rs 250 per 20-kg sack in November 1996 and Rs 260 around the same time in 1997.
Contesting the Soma's claim, state's civil supplies minister Jaspal Singh, who is also a member of the cabinet sub-committee, claimed the prices ruled between Rs 300 and Rs 310 per sack.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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