Urge to curb the import of pulses

28-May-2025 06:01 PM

New Delhi. The structure of the domestic market has been disrupted due to the unchecked import of cheap pulses from abroad. Prices of almost all pulses have fallen to or below the Minimum Support Price (MSP), causing significant losses to both farmers and traders.

Gaurav Gupta, Vice President of the Delhi Grain Merchants Association (DGMA), has urged the government to take immediate steps to control the import of pulses.

He also called for the withdrawal of the weekly stock disclosure mandate, which, he claims, creates panic among traders and disrupts the market.

According to the DGMA Vice President, pulses are being imported in much higher quantities than the country’s demand and consumption.

For instance, the annual requirement of yellow peas is around 15 lakh tonnes, while imports have reached 30 lakh tonnes—double the annual consumption. Since the imports are duty-free, they enter the market at very low prices, placing downward pressure on the prices of all other pulses.

So far this year, around 5.62 lakh tonnes of tur (pigeon peas) have been procured by the government for the central buffer stock, which will help improve availability in the domestic market.

However, with the sowing of Kharif crops about to begin, farmers may lose motivation to cultivate pulses if market prices remain low.

Gupta emphasized that the government must develop a mechanism to ensure that only the necessary quantity of pulses is imported and that import prices remain higher than the MSP. Ensuring that farmers receive at least the MSP should be a top priority; otherwise, the relevance of support prices will diminish.

While exporting countries benefit from massive imports, Indian farmers are being forced to sell their crops at unsustainably low prices. This, he argued, is an unfair and damaging policy.