Farmers facing injustice under BJP rule, says Cong; warns of blocking key highway on May 7

The Opposition Congress on Tuesday accused the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and at the Centre of committing injustice against farmers and warned of blocking a key highway if problems faced by cultivators were not resolved. Madhya Pradesh Congress president Jitu Patwari said though Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan hails from MP, the farmers in the state suffer the most.

The Opposition Congress on Tuesday accused the BJP governments in Madhya Pradesh and at the Centre of committing injustice against farmers and warned of blocking a key highway if problems faced by cultivators were not resolved. Madhya Pradesh Congress president Jitu Patwari said though Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan hails from MP, the farmers in the state suffer the most. He warned that if injustice being done to farmers was not immediately stopped, the Congress will join cultivators in staging a blockade of the Agra-Mumbai National Highway (which passes through MP) on May 7. The former minister, while participating in the 'Kisan Aakrosh Satyagraha' organised in Budhni town in Sehore district, accused the state and central governments of committing injustice against farmers. ''The country's Agriculture Minister (Chouhan) hails from Madhya Pradesh, but ironically, the worst atrocities and injustice are being committed against the state's farmers,'' he told the gathering. Patwari emphasised farmers in the state were facing serious problems such as fertiliser scarcity, disruptions in procurement at the minimum support price, shortages of gunny bags and land grabbing by land mafias, among others. The state government is celebrating the Farmer Welfare Year (2026) through just advertisements, while the reality is that cultivators are deeply in debt and struggling to get a fair price for their produce, he maintained. Patwari said the Mohan Yadav government had promised an MSP of Rs 2,700 per quintal for wheat, but farmers are getting rates ranging from Rs 1,800 to Rs 2,200 a quintal. He said former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan claims to have increased farmers' income eightfold in Madhya Pradesh during his long rule, but the plight of agriculturists in his home district of Sehore has exposed these assertions. The blockade on the Agra-Mumbai National Highway will be carried out along the route from Maharashtra to Rajasthan borders, including Sendhwa, Barwani, Khargone, Dhar, Dewas, Shajapur, Guna, Rajgarh, Shivpuri, Morena, and Gwalior (all in MP), he declared. The MPCC president argued that farmer-related issues were not about any party or ideology, but about patriotism and respect for the food providers. The Congress will fight for farmers' rights from the streets to Parliament, he asserted. The ruling BJP said the Congress has lost the right to talk about the welfare of farmers after neglecting them during its long rule in Madhya Pradesh and at the Centre in the past. State BJP spokesman Pankaj Chaturvedi said, ''The Congress has no moral right to talk about farmers. This is the same Congress party which could never provide MSP to farmers, which could never buy their crops, which never provided crop insurance benefits, which never made loans available to farmers.'' Everyone knows that during the Congress rule, irrigation facilities were inadequate and there was a huge gap between demand and supply of electricity, he noted. ''Today, the farmers of Madhya Pradesh are well-off and happy, which the Congress is unable to digest,'' Chaturvedi remarked.