Punjab Rural Development (Amendment) Act, 2022
The Department of Legal and Legislative Affairs, Punjab on July 18, 2022 has issued the Punjab Rural Development (Amendment) Act, 2022 to further amend the Punjab Rural Development Act, 1987. The following has been amended namely: Section 7 which states “Purpose for which the Fund may be applied” has been substituted namely: “The Fund shall be applied for the following purposes, namely: (i) for construction or repair of approach roads to mandis or procurement centres and street lights thereon enabling farmers in transportation of their produce; (ii) for construction or development of new mandis or procurement centres and development of old or katcha mandis or procurement centres; (iii) for making arrangements for supply of drinking water and for improving sanitation in the mandis or procurement centres; (iv) for providing well equipped rest houses or night shelters or sheds for farmers and labour engaged in procurement operations; (v) for augmenting storage facilities in mandis to store procured stocks so as to strengthen the procurement and marketing systems in the State; (vi) to provide relief to debt stressed farmers of the State to eliminate any possibility of distress sale; (vii) for development of hardware or software related to procurement or linking of land records, crop survey, bio-authentication of farmers at the mandi or State level which may improve transparency and facilitate the procurement activities; (viii) for installation or purchase of computerized electronic weighbridge or weighment facilities or quality testing equipment’s or sieving facilities in the mandis or procurement centres and its integration with e-procurement module; (ix) for automation and mechanization of mandis with facility of cleaning, sorting, drying, analyzing quality of grains, small shipping silo, bag sacking and stitching; and (x) for carrying out such purposes which may lead to strengthening of mandis or procurement operations.”
