The Punjab Department of Cooperation has initiated major disciplinary actions against seven senior administrative officials and transferred another following a high-level probe into a state-wide fertiliser diversion network. Moving on direct executive orders from Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann, state enforcement units cracked down on procurement anomalies across state-backed cooperative entities. The multi-layered fraud probe exposes a systemic racket where low-cost, government-subsidised agricultural fertiliser was deliberately substituted for expensive technical-grade materials to inflate corporate profits and misappropriate input tax credits.
Registration Begins for FutureCrime Summit 2026, India’s Largest Cybercrime Conference
The Weighment and Packaging Manipulation Racket
The industrial diversion matrix was uncovered following surprise physical audits and random laboratory sampling executed by the state agriculture department at major animal feed processing centers. For industrial production—specifically cattle feed manufacturing—cooperative federations like Markfed and Milkfed are legally required to purchase market-rate technical-grade urea. However, private chemical suppliers from New Delhi and Haryana allegedly conspired with internal factory procurement desks to bypass these protocols.
The syndicate subverted the supply ecosystem through targeted logistics manipulations. Highly subsidised, agricultural-grade neem-coated urea—packaged in distinct yellow bags meant exclusively for farmers at a fixed rate of ₹5.91 per kg—was systematically redirected to cattle feed plants during the initial yellow bag swap phase. Physical interceptions by state squads validated this mechanism, as field inspections at Milkfed’s Khanna plant yielded 1,340 bags falsely labeled as technical-grade urea, while another 1,740 bags of pure subsidised agricultural urea were seized from Milkfed’s Batala unit. Finally, auditors tracking mixed consignments at the Markfed Kapurthala plant isolated an additional 300 industrial bags intentionally mixed with neem-coated farming inventory, indicating an unmonitored off-market blending loop designed to hide the illicit product swap.
Institutional Suspensions and Administrative Shakeups
Following the formal confirmation of chemical mismatches via state laboratory testing, the administration moved to freeze the operational authorities of suspected internal accomplices. The Department of Cooperation initiated major penalty chargesheets against Milkfed’s core management team at the Khanna Cattle Feed Plant. Those facing severe disciplinary actions include the plant’s General Manager, the Manager for Animal Husbandry and Quality Control, the Deputy Manager for Purchases and Stores, and the Senior Assistant overseeing procurement workflows.
Simultaneously, structural purges hit Markfed’s high-level command structure. While a formal show-cause notice was delivered directly to Markfed’s Chief Manager, the government issued major penalty chargesheets against the entity’s General Manager, the Senior Accounts Officer looking after the Deputy Chief Accounts Officer seat, and the Senior Assistant acting as Commercial Manager. To prevent any immediate tampering with critical digital procurement logs or transactional ledgers, the administration executed an immediate administrative transfer of the Commercial Manager to an isolated department outside the processing loop.
Interstate Tax Evasion and Sovereign Safeguards
The investigative dragnet has expanded significantly beyond Punjab’s borders, mutating into a wider economic offense probe involving massive Goods and Services Tax (GST) evasion. State tax authorities established that the private contractors—primarily M/s Manisha Trading Company of New Delhi and M/s AM Chemical of Sonipat—utilized falsified corporate invoices to claim illicit Input Tax Credits (ITC) on products they never legally delivered. To address these trans-state financial loops, the Punjab government has formally referred the dynamic evidence profiles to the Principal Commissioners of Central GST (CGST) in New Delhi and Panchkula for asset tracking.
To permanently eliminate opportunistic private intermediaries from exploiting state resources, Chief Minister Mann has ordered a complete structural overhaul of the state’s agricultural supply grid. Moving forward, Markfed has been designated as the absolute, single nodal agency for the procurement and distribution of all technical-grade urea within the state territory. The state cooperative command has been instructed to source materials directly from authenticated, public-sector Government of India manufacturing units. Zonal police units have also been given direct clearances to file criminal FIRs against the four primary private dealers to secure immediate custodial interrogations and map the complete financial footprint of the diversion matrix.
