The main legal point established in the judgment is the obligation of the State and FCI to directly procure paddy from farmers at the MSP to prevent distress sales and eliminate middlemen.

JUDGMENT :

S. Muralidhar, J.

1. There are two writ petitions filed as Public Interest Litigations (PILs) by the farmers of Odisha. While the farmers of the Districts of Cuttack and Kendrapara came forward, more than two decades ago, to file OJC No.17037 of 2001, the farmers of Bolangir District in western Odisha came forward in 2002 to file OJC No.3721 of 2002.

2. The CONTC No.2932 of 2012 was filed by the Petitioners in OJC No.3721 of 2002 complaining of failure to implement the interim judgment dated 25th April, 2002 and the detailed order dated 13th December, 2004 of this Court in these writ petitions.

3. The central concern in both these writ petitions, at the time they were filed, was about the “unholy combination/nexus of the Rice Millers, Storage agents, Civil Supply Officials and Officials of Food Corporation of India (FCI) in paddy procurement.” According to the Petitioners, as a result, “there is wide distress sale of paddy all over the State, which has seriously affected the poor farmers.” Therefore, the prayers in both the writ petitions are identical. Apart from asking for an investigation into the matter by an independent agency “to find out the remedial measures” so as to protect public interest and a CBI investigation against “the persons, who are involved in the corrupt practice.”, the central prayer is for a direction to the FCI “to procure the paddy directly from the farmers instead of rice from the millers as per the provisions of the food policies.”

The interim judgment

4. On 15th April 2002, after hearing the parties at some length, at the initial stage itself, orders were reserved and on 25th April 2002, the Court delivered what it termed as an ‘Interim Judgment’. The necessity for the Interim Judgment, as explained by the Court, was on account of the fact that “this year the farmers of the Bolangir district have had reasonably good harvest compared to the previous disastrous years and that they need immediate protection in the matter of sale of their harvested paddy.” Therefore, “notwithstanding the fact that the Opposite Parties are yet to file their counter affidavits, and we are granting them time of one month for filing such counter affidavits”, the Court proceeded to deliver the ‘Interim Judgment’ on the expectation that the problems that may arise or the advantages that may be gained by implementing the Interim Judgment “can also be projected in the counter affidavits to be filed so that this Court can judge the impact, the efficacy and the usefulness of the Interim Judgment that is now being rendered.”

5. The Court discussed the Food Corporations Act, 1964 (FC Act) and in particular Section 13 of the FC Act, which states that “it shall be the primary duty of the FCI to undertake the purchase, storage, movement, transport, distribution and sale of food-grains and other food-stuffs.” Further, the FCI is also expected to “promote, by such means as it thinks fit, the production of food-grains and other food-stuffs”.

6. The Court noted that procurement of food-grains would necessarily involve ensuring of the Minimum Support Price (MSP) to the growers in terms of the extant policy of the Government.

7. By this time, the pleadings in OJC No.17037 of 2001 was complete and from a perusal of those pleadings, the Court was of the view that “the farmers of Orissa, a good percentage of them being illiterate, are an exploited lot.” The Court noted that the complaint in OJC No.17037 of 2001 as well as in the companion OJC No.3721 of 2002 was that the arrangement by which the State Government in conjunction with the FCI authorized private mill owners to procure paddy from cultivators and then deliver rice to FCI hulled out of the paddy so procured, with the obligation of the millers to procure paddy only at the MSP fixed by the Central Government, "has led to the mill owners supplying rice to the Food Corporation of India not produced out of the paddy hulled after procurement of the freshly harvested paddy but from quant