New Delhi: The government should guarantee a minimum support price for wheat and rice, Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda said on Saturday after meeting various food growers.
Hooda, a former Haryana chief minister, heads a party panel on the issue of farmers and agriculture. He had invited the farmer leaders, including Bharatiya Kisan Union leaders Rakesh Tikait and Yudhveer Singh, among others, to hold consultations with them on the issues affecting the food growers.
The report prepared by the Hooda-led panel will be debated during the three-day Congress 'Chintan Shivir' to be held in Udaipur from May 13-15. “Their main demand is over an MSP guarantee. If the government could bring three ordinances which later became farm laws, they can bring a fourth ordinance saying that anyone purchasing grains below MSP will be sentenced,” Hooda said after the meeting.
“Such an ordinance would be like an MSP guarantee and would apply both to private players as well as government agencies,” he said. Farmer groups from Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttarakhand also met the Congress leader, where they flagged issues like peasant friendly export and import policy to avoid distress sale of grains and protection of crops against the impact of climate change.
“If the farmer is not able to export his produce, he has to sell it at lower prices. Then they are also concerned over the impact of climate change,” said Hooda. Notably, the Congress had backed the year-long farmers agitation in 2020-21, after which the three farm laws were withdrawn by the Centre.
The farmer had protested at the borders of Delhi pressing for a repeal of the three laws, which they claimed were in favour of the corporates. The laws were withdrawn to avoid electoral losses for the BJP in the five states, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur that went to polls in February this year.
Though the protests did not dent the BJP prospects, the farmers have been demanding that the MSP should be legalised. The Congress leaders said that the Centre’s promise of doubling the income of the farmers by 2022 has not been fulfilled and the peasants continue to suffer from high input cost of agricultural operations.
Tikait particularly had been saying that he will continue to demand a law for MSP and withdrawal of cases that had been lodged against the protesting farmers last year. “I thank them for sharing their views. We will now take up the MSP issue,” said Hooda, hinting that the grand old party plans to target the government.
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