After about four days of complete boycott of groundnut purchase from the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (Nafed), oil millers on Tuesday stated that they will resume purchase of groundnut through auctions.

The Saurashtra Oil Millers Association (SOMA) had raised objections against Nafed’s administrative and policy issues in purchase of groundnut from e-auctions held by the co-operative body.

“We had made repeated representations raising our concerns to the Nafed officials. When our requests were not attended, we had to boycott groundnut purchase from Nafed. But today we received verbal and written assurance from officials for resolution of the issues faced by us. We have, therefore, decided to participate in purchase of groundnut,” said Sameer Shah, President, SOMA.

“There were administrative issues and transparency problem in auctions. The e-auction mechanism lacked transparency, to which Nafed has partially agreed to resolve the issue. We will observe the operations for a period of eight days after which we will decide the future course of action,” said Shah.

SOMA had raised objections on irregular issuance of delivery orders, delay in lifting of goods at the godowns due to irregular staff. SOMA also accused Nafed for adopting a biased approach in imposing penalty with interest on late payments, while Nafed failed to deliver goods on time.

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