Rain-Hit Wheat: Punjab lags behind as centre relaxes wheat norms for Haryana, Rajasthan
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ April 15,2026
Delay in sending the DO letter to union government seeking relaxation in specification for wheat procurement seems to have proving costly to Punjab as till date the central team is still analyzing the sample collected from the fields
As per sources the Punjab government has written a letter to the central government on April 9, 2026 after the widespread rain that caused destruction in the fields of Punjab whereas the Haryana had written the letter on April 4, 2026. After 11 days, Haryana gets green signal from the government to procure the damaged crop raising concerns over procurement and farmer distress.”
After Rajasthan, today Haryana too gets Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution and the Department of Food & Public Distribution (Storage & Research Division) orders, relaxing wheat procurement norms for Haryana amid Rabi season procurement
Responding to the demand of the Haryana government, the central government has announced a relaxation in the uniform specifications of wheat for the Rabi Marketing Season 2026-27.
“Meanwhile, the Department of Food and Public Distribution, Government of India, has issued a letter to the Rajasthan Government relaxing the limit of lustre loss in wheat up to 50% across the state. In Haryana, however, the Central Government has relaxed the limit for lustre loss in wheat up to 70% across the state.”
For Rajasthan, orders dated April 9, 2026, the government has relaxed the limit of shrivelled and broken grains up to 15%, against the existing limit of 6% under uniform specifications in the entire state of Rajasthan. Similarly, for Haryana farmers, the permissible limit for shrivelled and broken grains has been increased to 15 per cent, up from the existing 6 per cent. Both damaged and slightly damaged grains together shall not exceed 6 per cent, whereas previously no relaxation was allowed.
In a letter addressed to the Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Affairs, Haryana, the ministry directed the state to implement the relaxed norms.
“In order to reduce the hardship of farmers and to avoid distress sale of wheat, it has been decided to procure wheat in all districts of Haryana with relaxation in the uniform specifications of wheat with effect from the commencement of procurement season of wheat,” the letter says.
Wheat procured under these relaxed norms will be stacked and accounted for separately. Any deterioration in the quality of such stocks during storage will be the sole responsibility of the state government.
Wheat procured under relaxed specifications will be liquidated on an overriding priority basis, with all financial and operational implications to be borne by the state, said the letter.
On the other hand, Punjab’s Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister Lal Chand Kataruchak today said that “the procurement agencies are regularly visiting the mandis and are taking stock of all the arrangements. He further added that earlier due to inclement weather there occurred some issues but now with the improvement in weather the wheat arrival in the mandis has picked up pace. He also mentioned that till now over 4 LMT of Wheat has arrived in the mandis out of which 80000 MT stands procured and the pace of procurement is gathering steam with each passing day. This time Punjab has got the target to procure 122 LMT but the State has made foolproof arrangements for 132 LMT.”
