Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Thursday said that the State Government would seek vital inputs from the representatives of the farmers and farm labour associations before finalising the legislation on ‘Debt Determination and Settlement’ in the forthcoming Budget Session of Punjab Vidhan Sabha.
Presiding over a meeting with the representatives of 12 farmers and farm labour unions here, the Chief Minister said that a high level committee comprising Food and Civil Supplies Minister, with Revenue, Agriculture Minister and Industries Minister as its members held several rounds of discussions with the bankers and money lenders adding that the committee would now consult farmers to address the issue of indebtness in totality.
Badal hoped that this legislation would prove to be milestone in mitigating the sufferings of beleaguered peasantry thereby providing much needed relief to them by regulating the system of private money lending.
Badal told the members of the delegation that he had already taken up the issue of procurement at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and Public Stock holding of food grains for food security of the nation with the Government of India (GoI) to safeguard the interests of small and resource poor farmers in respect of respect of WTO recommendations.
The Chief Minister also asked the Financial Commissioner Cooperation to evolve a mechanism for smooth and hassle free debt recovery of loans advanced to the farmers from Cooperative Banks in consultation with representatives of farm associations. He urged the delegation to prevail upon the farmers to return their loans in time so that the cooperative banks could be made financially self sustainable to provide better services to the peasantry and there was no need to use any coercive method.
The Chief Minister apprised the delegation that the State Government had already made the payment on account of previous sugarcane arrears of the farmers and the compensation worth Rs 668 crore to the cotton growers in Malwa belt.
To combat the menace of stray cattle and dogs especially in villages, the Chief Minister told the delegation that cattle ponds over an area 25 acre Panchayati land were being constructed by the Rural development & Panchayats department to keep stray cattle there in order to protect the standing crops from damage and loss to human lives.