New Delhi, Aug 12 (IANS): The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution on Friday issued a directive to all the states and UTs to enforce stock disclosure by stockholders of Tur pulse and also to monitor and verify the stocks.

The step has been initiated under Section 3(2)(h) and 3(2)(i) of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955.

The states/UTs have also been asked to direct stockholder entities to upload the data of stocks held by them on the online monitoring portal of the Department of Consumer Affairs, on a weekly basis.

"There are reports that some sections of stockists and traders are resorting to restricted sales in an attempt to create artificial scarcity to push the price upward. The retail price of Tur has been on upward trend from second week of July, 2022 following the slow progress in kharif sowing as compared to last year due to excess rainfall and water logging conditions in parts of major Tur growing states of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh," the Ministry said in a statement.

It said that the Centre is closely watching the overall availability and prices of pulses in the domestic as well as overseas markets to take necessary preemptive measures in an event of unwarranted price rise in the upcoming high demand festival months.

"On top of the sufficient overall availability of pulses in the domestic market, the government is currently holding about 38 lakh tons of pulses which are being released in the market to further augment the stocks available in the market," it added.