In an attempt to woo the farming community before the Assembly elections, Punjab Congress is planning to raise the issue of delayed payments to farmers at judicial platform.
Alleging negligence on part of Punjab Government to make payments of Wheat crop to the farmers in time, Punjab Congress Vice President laal Singh on Tuesday said that Congress would file a petition in the High Court, as the delayed payment of crop cause a severe dent on the finances of the poor farmer.
Addressing a press conference in Chandigarh, laal Singh said that the farmer community had to pay Rs300 crore of extra interest on their crop loans last year, because the Punjab Government had taken around four months to clear the payments of the farmers, after the procurement of Wheat in 2015.
laal Singh said that this year, where on one hand Punjab Government has not been able to avail Cash Credit limit for making payments to the farmers in time, it could neither exhaust the funds available with it till April 30, 2016. He said that the Government could release payments up to 5400 crore only and the rest of the CC limit available got returned to the banks due to non-utilisation.
He claimed that now once again the farmers have not been getting payments of their produce for many days,which will cause unwarranted burden on their finances, and they will have to pay unnecessary interest on the crop loan, they have taken from the moneylenders.
He said that this year large payment of the farmers was expected to be delayed as the central Government had issued Cash Credit limit for the procurement of 90 lac metric tonne only, while the Government was expecting arrival of around 1.10 crore metric tonne of Wheat this season. Thus, the payment of additional procurement by the Government agencies was expected to be delayed this year too. laal Singh claimed that only 25 per cent payments of the total procurement of Wheat had been made. He said that the debt ridden farmers in the state should be made to suffer undue losses on account of delay in payments. And Congress would file a petition that the burden of interest due to delay in payment should be borne by the State Government and there should be a fixed date for finalizing all the payments of procurement of Wheat or Paddy. Farmers should be given interest on their payments after the due date so that they are not burdened with additional interest on their loans, he added.
On the issue of growing number of farmer suicides, laal Singh said that between Jan 7 to April 30, 2016, 76 farmers had committed suicides in the Paddy growing Malwa belt, and this shows that the paddy growing farmers had to pay the price of sudden fall in the prices of Basmati last season, which was a result of poor policy of the centre and the State Government.