Centre wants to do away with MSP: Surjewala Chandiga'

The BJP-led Union government is executing a "sinister conspiracy" to do away with the minimum support price for crops, leaving farmers at the mercy of cruel market forces, alleged senior Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala here on Thursday. This was being done to reduce the subsidy bill by curtailing the procurement of foodgrains, Surjewala said alluding towards an e-mail, dated October 18, 2019, purportedly from a senior official of the Centre.

"The BJP rose to power on the false premise of giving cost plus 50 per cent profit as the minimum support price and doubling farmers' income by 2022," Surjewala said. "But the BJP government is now executing a sinister conspiracy to altogether do away with the MSP, leaving the farmer at the mercy of cruel market forces," the former Kaithal MLA alleged.

Saying that farmers were being "surreptitiously betrayed", he claimed that the Centre wanted that the procurement for the central pool be curtailed to the requirement of the public distribution system and no more. Besides, it wanted that a limit be imposed on procurement per acre, he said quoting the e-mail.

"At the background is the procurement of wheat and paddy crops," he said, adding that India's food security was dependent upon farmers of Haryana and Punjab whose contribution to the central pool was over 65 per cent. Surjewala said the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) in its report for the 2020-21 rabi season had "recommended" the curtailment of the procurement of wheat and paddy.

"In the report released in October 2019, it has been recorded that the government procured a large share of wheat, about 73 per cent of production in Punjab and 80 per cent in Haryana, in the rabi marketing season 2019-20. The commission recommends that the open-ended procurement policy be reviewed'," he said. He alleged that another link of the "conspiracy" was to virtually "shut down" the Food Corporation of India.

"In the past five years, the BJP Government has virtually stopped food subsidy money to the FCI. The government owes Rs 1,74,000 crore to the FCI. In five years, the FCI has been saddled with a debt of Rs 2,65,000 crore..the consequence is that FCI is irreparably indebted," Surjewala said. The Congress leader further questioned who would carry out the procurement of foodgrains if the FCI was shut.

Hitting out at the M L Khattar government in Haryana, he said it was already ahead in putting a ceiling on the procurement of crops, thereby pushing Haryana's farmers "into a vicious trap". "In Haryana, the Khattar Government does not procure more than five quintals per acre of bajra, mustard and sunflower. On top of it, the government has made advance online registration mandatory. The result is that crops of Haryana farmers, particularly those from southern Haryana, were sold at Rs 500 to Rs 800 per quintal less than the MSP," he said.

He said the Congress would raise these issues in Parliament and party leader Rahul Gandhi would highlight these during their 'Bharat Bachao' rally at Delhi on December 14. "We will raise these issues at every platform," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)