The Bengal government has decided to take stock of daily release of potatoes from 460-odd cold storages across the state to keep prices of the crop in check.

The price of potatoes has been moving northwards across the state over the past couple of weeks, said a Bengal government official.

“The state government is sure that there is an artificial crisis of potato, taking price of the commodity to Rs 30 to Rs 32 a kg from Rs 22 a kg in the markets in the past two weeks. We need to check whether required quantum of potato is being released to the markets from the stores as there is no major dearth of production this year,” a senior government official told The Telegraph.

Sources in the agriculture marketing department said the state had produced about 90 lakh lakh tonnes of potato this year, while its annual production was around 110 lakh tonnes.

But the less production has little to do with the sudden hike in prices as the state’s annual consumption requirement is about 60 lakh tonnes.

About 55 lakh tonnes of potato were stored in the cold stores in March, which was enough to meet the state’s consumption requirement till December when the fresh produce starts arriving in markets, said sources.

“Now it has to be seen whether at least 5 lakh tonnes of potato are being released from the cold stores every month as it is the state’s monthly consumption requirement. Primarily, it appears lesser quantum of potato is being released from the cold stores,” said an official.

Sources in the government said the district authorities had been asked to deploy block level officials to maintain a record of the quantum of potato released from each of the cold stores everyday.

Similarly, police have been asked to maintain a strict vigil on inter-state borders and markets to ensure that the commodity is not being taken away from the state in an unauthorised way.

Sources in the agri-marketing department said that they had already visited some cold stores to find out the actual problem and found that majority of the stores were not being able to release potato according to the requirement in the markets.

“This is because the cold stores have to engage labourers to take out potato bags from the stores in a way that social distancing norm could be maintained. Some cold store owners said that they could not deploy enough number of labourers since May this year,” said a source.

In a bid to get rid of the situation and make potato available at Rs 25 a kg, the Bengal government has asked all the cold stores located in potato producing districts like Hooghly, East Burdwan and Birbhum to file a regular report mentioning daily release of potatoes.

“District officials were also asked to note the name of the farmers who are taking potatoes out from the cold storages to track their place of supply,” said a senior state government official.

A section of the officials said that there is a trend to hold the crop when price is rising and the middlemen become active to create an artificial crisis by holding back the stock.

“A daily monitoring of release of the produce might help the state to some extent, but more importantly the state has to be aggressive to ensure that potato is released according to the consumption requirement,” said a bureaucrat.

A strong vigil in the inter-state borders has been initiated as many middlemen were trying to sell the crop in the neighbouring states like Jharkhand, Bihar and Odisha as the price of the crop is higher in those states compared to Bengal.

Police already seized around 250 quintals of potato from Jharkhand border in Mohammedbazar which was on the way to sell in Jharkhand on Tuesday evening.

“We have already asked all the cold storages to give us details of potatoes released from their stores and names and contact number of the farmers who took the produce out of the stores,” said Moumita Godara Basu, the Birbhum district magistrate.

Humayun Biswas, an additional district magistrate in East Burdwan, said: “Our teams are regularly visiting the markets to get the stock of the situation.”