Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led Punjab Government on Tuesday came in the line of fire after 46 per cent of the 4.5 lakh quintal moong crop was procured below the minimum support price. The main opposition Congress alleged that procurement of the maximum portion of moong crop by below MSP has left the farming community cheated, while the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) asked the Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann to compensate the farmers for the losses.
The farmers have also demanded compensation of Rs 2,500 per quintal to the moong growers. On July 28, the State Cabinet had given ex-facto approval for compensation of up to maximum of Rs 1,000 per quintal to the farmers who were not able to fetch the MSP for their produce.
Leader of Opposition in Punjab Vidhan Sabha Partap Singh Bajwa said that the maximum portion of the crop has been sold at price ranging between Rs 5000 and Rs 6500 per quintal against its MSP of Rs 7275. Bajwa, the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader, said that this exposes the lack of experience of the present-day government. “Out of the total arrival of four lakh quintals of ‘moong’ in the mandis, 3.46 lakh quintals were sold below MSP to the private purchasers and only 48,000 quintals (merely 10 per cent) were purchased by the Punjab Government at the MSP rate,” he said.
He said that the Chief Minister must clarify to the farmers about the total amount of funds released by the Government under its DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) scheme to those who had to sell their produce to the private players at a loss of Rs 1700 – Rs 2200 per quintal due to the lapses on the part of the government.
Congress MLA and All India Kissan Congress president Sukhpal Singh Khaira, also coming down heavily on the AAP government for failing to provide MSP to the farmers growing pulses, said that while the government has been talking about crop diversification so vociferously, it has miserably failed to come to the support of farmers cultivating moong.
SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal demanded that the farmers be compensated for the loss suffered by them after being forced to sell their moong crop a few thousands of rupees below the MSP of Rs 7,225 announced by the Chief Minister. “The Chief Minister announced in the State assembly that farmers who had sowed moong crop over lakhs of acres following his assurance that it would be procured on MSP, would be compensated after government agencies failed to procure 83 per cent of the total crop which arrived in State mandis,” he said while interacting with farmers in Tapa Mandi.