A couple of days after the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the general Budget, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat once again thanked the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jaitley and Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh for aspects like Rs 6,000 crore allocated to agriculture and related departments. The Chief Minister was speaker at a programme organised by farmers here on Saturday.
Speaking at the programme held in the Janata Milan hall at the CM’s residence he said that the general budget was dedicated to benefit villages, farmers, labourers, women and the weaker sections of society. Referring to the provisions in the union budget, the Chief Minister said that Rs 6,000 crore had been allocated to Uttarakhand for agriculture and allied departments. A sum of Rs 145 crore has been received in the food procession sector for the construction of cold storages. Additional production of about 55,000 metric tonnes of fruits and vegetables will have to be achieved in order to use such capacity. He stressed on the need for increasing production and emphasis on modern agriculture inorder to meet the target set by the Prime Minister of doubling the income of farmers by 2022.
He reminded the gathering that under the Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Kisan Kalyan Yojana, loans amounting to Rs one lakh each at two per cent interest are being provided to small and marginal farmers in the state. loans amounting to Rs 560 crore has been distributed under this scheme to farmers during the past four months in Uttarakhand. Rawat said that during the year 2015-16, the state had received Rs 4385 crore yunder the Krishi Vikas Yojana.
This allocation has increased to Rs 9338 crore this year. For traditional agriculture, Uttarakhand was allocated Rs 748 crore in the previous year whereas this year it has been allocated Rs 1,326 crore. In addition to this a sum of Rs 1509 crore for the next three years has been approved by the centre for the purpose of cluster-based and organic agriculture.
With emphasis being laid on technology-basedagriculture, the number of farmer machinery banks has been incrased from 70 to 370. With the cooperation of National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), approval has been granted to Rs 2,600 crore allocation for cooperative committees. He exhorted the farmers to focus on the vision of Apnu Bazaar to secure good earnings.
The income of the farmers will increase if they sell their produce directly to the consumers and the customers too will benefit from direct marketing. He asked the farmers to derive the benefit of the prime minister crop insurance scheme and insure their crops and cattle. Referring to the general budget he said that provision had been made to convert about three crore tube-wells run on diesel or electricity to solar-power. With this, the farmers will not have to depend on electricity supply for water in the future, he added.
Vidhan Sabha speaker and Rishikesh MlA Premchand Agrawal said that provisions had been made in the union budget in the interests of farmers to meet the target of doubling their income by 2022. The Dehradun Mayor and Dharmpur MlA Vinod Chamoli, Vikasnagar MlA Munna Singh Chauhan and Agriculture director Gauri Shankar among others were present on the occasion.