The state government faced an embarrassing situation on Saturday as quintals of potatoes were thrown by farmers in front of Vidhan Bhawan and outside Chief Minister’s residence and the Governor House.
The road outside the high-security Vidhan Bhawan was strewn with potatoes on Saturday morning. The scene was similar outside Raj Bhawan which houses Governor Ram Naik and outside 5, Kalidas Marg residence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
The police and the district administration were caught off guard and the development sent the officials in a tizzy since the dumping of potatoes was carried out on Friday night.
SSP of lucknow, Deepak Kumar said that the vehicles of farmers involved in dumping potatoes in these places have been identified and they would be acted upon.
Farmers, however said that they had not done anything wrong as this was a symbolic protest against the government and its policies.
Agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi dismised the farmers allegations saying, “The state government was committed to the welfare of farmers, especially potato growers. It’s an organized conspiracy to malign the Yogi Adityanath government. Its incorrect to say that it was potato that was thrown on the streets. In fact, they were rotten and rejected stock of the crop.’’
Shahi asserted that the entire stock of the previous crop of potato had already been taken out of cold storages and disposed in the market.
The minister maintained, “For the first time in the history of the state, the government has taken a slew of measures to help farmers particularly potato growers. The state government has launched market intervention scheme and announced minimum support price of Rs 487 quintal of potato and 13,000 quintals of potato has been purchased by official agencies from the farmers.’’
He went on to add that CM Yogi Adityanath had also reached out to the Union government and asked Union Agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh to ask other states to procure potato from UP.
Farmers were angry at their crops being wasted and said that the BJP government was doing nothing to arrest the decay.
“We are getting a price of Rs 3-4 per kg for our produce from the ‘mandis ‘ while we want Rs 10 per kg. What else do we do when our pleas have fallen on deaf ears,” asked a farmer. leader of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) Harnam Singh Verma said that the farmers were not getting remunerative price for their produce and they do not know where to keep them and accused the state government of not fulfilling its promises.
The BKU leader said that the government might have announced a MSP but the procurement was next to nil.
“Also, the support price of Rs 487 per quintal is not adequate. While fixing the MSP, the government have not taken into account the money paid by farmers to store their produce in cold storages. In such a situation, farmers were forced to dump their produce on the streets,” said Verma.
UP is the largest producer of the potato in the country and close to 35 percent of the crop is grown in the state. During the crop season 2016-17 the total area sown was 6.14 lakh hectares and the estimated production was 1.56 crore MT. The total capacity of 1,825 cold storages in private and cooperative sector is 1.42 crore MT and 1.20 crore MT was stored in the cold storages.