The acting director general of the Department of Fisheries, Dr Md Khaled Kanak, faces disciplinary action for permitting hilsa imports from India without informing the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Krishi Sangbad reports. The ministry's Fisheries-1 branch served him a show-cause notice on Sunday, giving him three days to reply.

Ministry sources said the department had allowed the imports at a time of falling hilsa production and high domestic prices. The decision to bring hilsa from India into one of the world's main hilsa-producing countries has raised questions in the ministry about whose pressure, inducement or interest lay behind it, and the matter is being examined. Imports have already been stopped at the initiative of the secretary and the ministry.

India has always taken hilsa from Bangladesh, the report notes; this was the first time the flow was reversed, and Indian fish traders have meanwhile applied to Bangladesh for hilsa. Ministry sources described the imported fish as lacking the taste and smell of Bangladeshi hilsa.

According to the National Board of Revenue, 22 firms imported 352,786 kg of hilsa through the Benapole land port in July and August of the current fiscal year at an import value of about Tk 6.93 crore, all of it from the Bharuch area of Gujarat.

Asked about the notice, Dr Khaled Kanak said he had received one from the ministry, that it was administrative and would be answered administratively. The halt to imports and the notice make the government's position clear to fishers and hilsa traders in the peak season.

Source: Krishi Sangbad