'Govt surrendered farmers' interests': AIKS seeks roll back of tariff relaxation on US products

India and the US decided in June to resolve pending trade disputes at the World Trade Organisation WTO and in the name of dispute resolution, the central government has surrendered interests of Indian farmers, the All India Kisan Sabha AIKS said in a statement.

The All India Kisan Sabha on Tuesday demanded that the central government roll back tariff relaxations on various US products, including chickpeas, lentils, almonds, walnuts, and apples. India and the US decided in June to resolve pending trade disputes at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and in the name of dispute resolution, the central government has ''surrendered interests of Indian farmers'', the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) said in a statement. They said India has provided tariff reductions on some US products, including chickpeas, lentils, almonds, walnuts, and apples. ''The All India Kisan Sabha demands immediate roll back of the tariff reductions provided to various US origin agricultural commodities, including poultry, apples, nuts and lentils,'' the AIKS said. ''It also demands that the government should not enter into free trade agreements in agriculture, which will be detrimental for Indian farmers. AIKS reiterates a long-standing demand to bring agriculture out of WTO's Agreement on Agriculture,'' as per the statement. ''The United States and European Union is known to have used the dispute resolution mechanism of the WTO to raise cases against developing countries to garner compromises to its advantage,'' it said. In June, the US and India agreed to resolve six outstanding disputes at the WTO, and India agreed to reduce tariffs on certain US products, including chickpeas, lentils, almonds, walnuts, apples, boric acid, and diagnostic reagents. AIKS, the farmers' wing of Communist Party of India (Marxist), is the largest peasant organisation of the country and had 1,36,85,812 members in 2021-22, according to its website.

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