Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has urged the Government of India (GoI) to present a separate Agriculture Budget on the pattern of the Railway Budget for the welfare of farming community all over the country.
Addressing Punjab Assembly on the agrarian crisis being faced by the farming community, Badal said that majority of the nation’s population was dependent on agriculture thus this sector deserves primacy over any other sector.
He said that agriculture was the highest employment generating sector in the country and due to continuous overlooking by successive governments, the farmer across the country had been reeling under heavy debts. Thus, a separate budget for agriculture was the need of hour to bail out the farmers from current agrarian crisis.
Badal also demanded from Union government to announce a farmer friendly Crop insurance scheme based on plot or field as a unit for assessing damage to the crop besides ensuring remunerative Minimum Support Price (MSP) to the farmers for their produce.
The Chief Minister urged the GoI to evolve a mechanism of purchasing the alternate crops like Maize and Cotton at MSP so that farmers could be immensely benefited from it.
Badal said that provisions must be made by the Centre to ensure compensation of actual loss and include horticulture and livestock in the Calamity Relief Fund.
“I hope that the Union government will take a call on these issues to bail out the beleaguered farmer from the agrarian crisis” he added.