Jammu, Dec 2: The Administrative Council (AC) that met here under the chairmanship of the Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Friday approved the ‘regulations for the functioning of agriculture markets across Jammu and Kashmir’.
An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that the J&K Agriculture Produce and Market Committee (APMC) Act, 1997 ceased to exist after the operation of J&K State Reorganisation Act, 2019.
This board would manage and regulate the established mandies in J&K and remove the operational difficulties faced due to non-existing of statutory mechanism as on date.
ACS, APD, would head the board and besides having other official members would have representatives of mandies and food associations as members.
In terms of the new mechanism, Director Horticulture Planning and Marketing, J&K would declare any CA store, cold store, warehouse with above 3 ton capacity and cooperatives, FPOs, SHGs, and store centers as sub-yards of mandies for the purpose of doing trade on e-Nam platforms and for making e-payments on the e-Nam portal.
Director, Horticulture (Planning and Marketing), J&K would be the sole authority to issue unified licenses for carrying out trade in any mandi in J&K.
It has a provision to allow outside J&K traders to do trade on the e-Nam with the growers and traders of J&K.
For this purpose, the Director of Horticulture (Planning and Marketing), would recognise the licenses issued by the outside APMCs as valid licenses for doing trade on e-Nam portal on mutual understanding basis with other states and union territories.
Advisor to Lieutenant Governor Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar and Chief Secretary Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta also attended the meeting.