Jammu- The Jammu and Kashmir administration on Friday approved regulations for the functioning of agricultural markets across the union territory.
The Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture Produce and Market Committee (APMC) Act ceased to exist after the operation of J&K State Reorganization Act- 2019 with carving out of the Union Territory in Jammu and Kashmir.
The administrative council (AC), which met here under the chairmanship of the Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, approved regulations for the functioning of agriculture markets across Jammu and Kashmir’, an official spokesman said.
This Board will manage and regulate the established mandies in J&K and will remove the operational difficulties faced due to non-existing of statutory mechanism as on date, he said.
The board will be headed by the additional chief secretary and will have representatives of mandies and food associations as members as also other official members, spokesman said.
In terms of the new mechanism, director horticulture, planning and marketing to declare any store, cold store, warehouse with above 3 ton capacity and cooperatives, store centres as sub-yards of mandies for purpose of doing trade on e-nam platforms and for making e-payments on the e-nam portal, he said.
Director will be the sole authority to issue unified licences for carrying out trade in any mandi in J&K, he said.
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, spokesman said. For this purpose, the director is allowed to recognize the licenses issued by the outside APMCs as valid licenses for doing trade on e-nam portal on mutual understanding basis with other states, he said.