Thousands of booths of Delhi Milk Scheme (DMS), scattered throughout the capital city of India, are being grossly misused as private shops by the licensees in corrupt partnership of DMS-personnel by authorisation to sell products other than from DMS. It is to be noted that ‘Mother Dairy’ booths in Delhi-NCR sell only ‘Mother Dairy’ products, a big reason for success of ‘Mother Dairy’. Mere existence of DMS after launch of ‘Mother Dairy’ by Union government for Delhi-NCR is in itself wastage of public-resources also through double-spent on overheads.
An RTI-response revealed that DMS booth-holders continued to operate despite huge DMS outstanding against them. Monthly booth-sale of DMS revealed booth-holders providing a combined sale of just Rs 82 lakhs per month against a huge outstanding of more than Rs 23 crores against them with no signs of recovery or steps taken to abandon such booths with non-recoverable outstanding. RTI-response also revealed that requests of renowned co-operative giants like ‘Amul’ and ‘Sudha’ are pending with Union Ministry of Agriculture (Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries) for loss-generating DMS being handed over to them for effective utilisation of its infrastructure and to avoid heavy recurring loss to public-exchequer. ‘Delhi Milk Scheme’ should be either merged with ‘Mother Dairy’ or else it should be handed over to ‘Amul’ or ‘Sudha’.
Subhash Chandra Agrawal
(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
