Agriculture Minister rules out scrapping fertiliser booking app
Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao has defended the use of an app-based system for fertiliser distribution in Telangana. Despite technical glitches, the government maintains that the system is essential for preventing black-marketing and ensuring transparent supply to farmers.
Why it matters
Digital agricultural infrastructure is increasingly used to manage subsidies, but implementation challenges can directly impact farmer livelihoods and food security.
Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao ruled out scrapping the app-based system for fertiliser distribution, saying it was introduced to ensure that urea and other subsidised fertilisers reached genuine farmers transparently and in required quantities.
Responding to questions from members in the Legislative Council on Wednesday, Mr. Tummala said technical issues encountered in implementing the system were being addressed and steps were being taken to make it simpler and more efficient for farmers.
The members raised issues relating to urea supply, booking through the app, difficulties faced by tenant farmers, transportation charges for cooperative societies and technical glitches.
Mr. Tummala said fertiliser distribution had earlier been carried out through Aadhaar authentication. The app-based system was introduced primarily to prevent diversion, hoarding and black-marketing of fertilisers and to ensure that farmers received supplies according to their requirements.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in