Chandigarh: The Indian Army has rejected a consignment of whole milk powder supplied by Milkfed’s Ludhiana unit for being non-compliant with prescribed standards, triggering opposition criticism of the Punjab govt over quality control in its flagship dairy cooperative.Punjab govt-owned Milkfed owns the dairy brand Verka. The rejection of nearly 125 metric tonnes was conveyed in a letter from the commanding officer of an Army Service Corps (ASC) unit based in Jammu to the Ludhiana District Cooperative Milk Producers Union. The communication said two specific batches — one of 58.338 MT and another of 66.654 MT — had allegedly failed to meet the Army’s quality benchmarks.According to the documents, copies of which were also marked to the chief director of purchase and the Food Inspection Organisation under the ministry of defence, the samples were found to be “not free from other extraneous matter”, with a white thread allegedly noticed in them.The issue quickly snowballed into a political controversy, with SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia attacking the AAP govt and calling it a serious reflection on governance. Congress MP from Gurdaspur Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa also raised concern, saying if a product failed to meet Army standards, its distribution among the public would be a “serious public health concern”.Randhawa demanded a high-level independent probe into the matter and urged authorities to make public the quality inspection report of the consignment rejected by the Army.When contacted, Milkfed managing director (MD) Rahul Gupta said the cooperative maintained the highest standards of quality control during production and packaging. He said Milkfed had constituted a fact-finding committee to ascertain the exact cause of the rejection and address the alleged lapse. “The Indian Army is our esteemed customer and Milkfed has been catering to it for several decades. Supplies are continuing and there might have been some issue with a specific lot. The rejection was not necessarily a reflection of the product’s inherent quality,” Gupta said.He added Milkfed supplied several products, including lassi, cheese and tetra-packed milk, to the Army and there had been no quality-related issues with those.Gupta said the milk powder consignment had already been tested by a third-party NABL-accredited laboratory. He added samples from the rejected batches would now be sent for a second round of testing at the NABL-certified CALF (Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food) laboratory in Gujarat.
