Consumer Affairs, Food and Public distribution minister Ram Vilas Paswan said, government has taken various measures from time to time to stabilize prices of essential food items as well as to protect the interest of farmers. Replying to questions in the Lok Sabha today, Mr Paswan said, changes in prices of 22 essential food items including moong dal, potato and onion vis a vis the prices on the day of demonetization are being monitored on daily basis.<br/><br/>The minister said, the Price Stabilisation Fund (PSF) was set up with an initial corpus of 500 crore rupees in 2014-15 with the objective to tackle price volatility in agri horticultural commodities including pulses through appropriate market intervention. Mr Paswan informed the House that around 3.89 lakh tones of wheat, 184.5 lakh tonnes of rice and 10.50 lakh tonnes of pulses have been procured from farmers since demonetization.<br/><br/>He said, over 1525 persons were arrested, 163 persons were convicted and 46 black marketers were detained and goods over 4 crore rupees were confiscated under Prevention of Black Marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities Act . Mr Paswan said, during the demonetization period from November 2016 to February 2017, around 12900 tonnes of pulses were allocated to states for direct retailing to consumers at reasonable rates.