The Jammu Kashmir administration on Friday approved regulations for the functioning of agricultural markets across Jammu Kashmir.
The Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture Produce and Market Committee (APMC) Act ceased to exist after the operation of the J-K State Reorganization Act- 2019 with the carving out of Jammu Kashmir.
In an official handout, the JK admin said, 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 mandis in J&K and will remove the operational difficulties faced due to non-existing statutory mechanisms as of date, he said.
The board will be headed by the additional chief secretary and will have representatives of mandis and food associations as members as also other official members, the spokesman said.
In terms of the new mechanism, the director of horticulture, planning, and marketing is to declare any store, cold store, warehouse with above 3the ton capacity and cooperatives, and store centers as sub-yards of mandis 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 licenses 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.