Two top officials of the horticulture and the food processing department of Madhya Pradesh were removed on Saturday night, in a swift and unexpected move by the state government. Kalpana Srivastava, who was the principal secretary in the horticulture department, has not been given a new charge. While Commissioner of the department Manoj Kumar Agrawal, who is a 1993-batch IFS officer, has been sent back to the forest department.
JN Kansotia, additional chief secretary of the Animal Husbandry department, will now replace Srivastava as the principal secretary of the horticulture department.
The transfers came as a surprise because the orders were issued on the evening of a non-working day. The move was also intriguing because IAS officer Kalpana Shrivastava had recently probed an onion seed procurement scam, which prompted the state economic offences wing to register a preliminary inquiry.
Onion seed procurement scam in MP
The investigation had revealed that despite the state government fixing the rate of certified seeds at horticulture nurseries at Rs 1,100 per kg, the department was purchasing uncertified Kharif onion seeds at Rs 2,300 per kg. The seeds were bought from institutions instead of state-run MP Agro without inviting tenders. For the first time this year, Kharif onion was included in the National Horticulture Mission, after which the department bought 90 quintals of onion seeds for Rs 2 crores. Notably, the Commissioner of the department, Manoj Agrawal had come under the scanner in this matter.
Several scams have been reported in the Madhya Pradesh horticulture department, including the distribution of sub-standard Chinese power tillers to farmers under the Centre’s farm mechanization scheme, irregularities in a plantation along Narmada banks, purchase of marigold seeds 80% of which did not germinate, and an alleged scam in which substandard plastic mulches were used for onion storage.
It was Kalpana Srivastava who had ordered an inquiry into the onion seed scam.
