'Vetri Special Vegetable Pack' sale launched – 10 vegetables for ₹100 at 218 cooperative outlets

5 November 2026 · English Tamil Nadu

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Topics: Tamil Nadu · 5 November 2026 Current Affairs (UPSC / TNPSC / SSC / RRB)

News

To shield consumers from rising vegetable prices ahead of Deepavali, Cooperation Minister V. Gandhiraj launched the Tamil Nadu Cooperation Department's 'Vetri Special Vegetable Pack' in Chennai on Thursday, 5 Nov 2026. The pack of 10 vegetables (about 2.55–2.60 kg) is sold for ₹100 for three days, 5–7 Nov, at 218 cooperative outlets across the State and from 4 mobile vegetable vans in Chennai. Only one pack per person; it is not sold through ration shops (PDS).

Key facts

Background

• Price stabilisation: 'Operation Greens' – announced in the Union Budget 2018–19 with ₹500 crore to stabilise prices of tomato, onion and potato (TOP); run by the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries. In 2020 it was extended to all fruits and vegetables ('TOP to TOTAL').
• Science (botany): onion – a bulb (a reduced stem with fleshy leaves); ginger – a rhizome (underground stem); potato – a stem tuber; carrot – a modified tap root. Lemon is rich in citric acid and vitamin C.
• Uzhavar Sandhai: Tamil Nadu's first farmers' market, where farmers sell directly to consumers without middlemen, opened at Madurai on 14 Nov 1999.
• Cooperation: the 97th Constitutional Amendment (2011) gave cooperative societies constitutional status (Part IXB); 'co-operative societies' are in the State List.

Tamil Nadu link: the scheme is run entirely by the Tamil Nadu Cooperation Department; registrars in all districts monitor supply. The 'Uzhavar Sandhai' system of direct farmer sales also began in Tamil Nadu – at Madurai in 1999.

Source: DT Next (PTI), 4 & 5 Nov 2026; IANS, 5 Nov 2026; TNAU Agritech Portal (Uzhavar Sandhai); Vikaspedia (Operation Greens)

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