After a hectic poll campaign spanning over a month-and-a-half, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is back to business holding closed-door meetings with officials to review the progress of development schemes and enquire about the ongoing projects.

A senior official told The Pioneer in Lucknow on Wednesday that the Chief Minister called some officials at his official residence and enquired about wheat purchase centres and progress in purchase at those centers as well as progress in the construction of Purvanchal and Bundelkhand expressways.

In the first week of March, the UP government increased wheat procurement target by 10 per cent, as compared to last year, to 55 lakh metric tonne, for the 2019 Rabi season which began from April 1.

Besides, the government increased the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat by more than 6 per cent (from Rs 1,735 per quintal to Rs 1,840 per quintal). The government will also pay a bonus of Rs 20 per quintal for wheat chaffing, raising the effective payment to Rs 1,860 per quintal.

In 2018, the state government had purchased 53 lakh tonne wheat against a target of 50 lakh tonne. During the Akhilesh regime in 2017, the state government agencies had procured 37 lakh tonne wheat as compared to 8 lakh tonne in 2016.

The review followed reports suggesting wheat procurement in the state had plummeted by almost 40 per cent to 27 lakh tonne from over 37 lakh tonne during the corresponding period last year.

The official said that questions were being raised on the decline in purchase despite 6,000 centres being set up by the state government across the state for direct purchase of wheat from farmers. In fact, the government had announced that procurement agencies would continue purchasing wheat from farmers even if the season’s target was achieved during April 1 and June 15, 2019. However, the government failed to meet the target.

Yogi was told that so far, nearly 27 lakh tonne wheat had been procured from 5,30,000 farmers, who were paid over Rs 5,000 crore directly in their bank accounts. Nearly, 6,755 procurement centres are operational across the state. “Officials should now pull up their socks. The elections are over and they should focus on the administrative work,” the CM said. Sources say that the CM also discussed appointment of 68,500 assistant teachers, an issue which is pending in court. The CM asked the officials to ensure that the issue was resolved at the earliest.