A day after the Ministry of Agriculture notified the formation of a committee on Minimum Support Price (MSP), the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) has rejected it saying that “so-called farmer leaders” who supported the now-repealed farm laws are its members. The SKM said it had no plans to send three representatives to the Government’s 29-member panel.
In a related development, the Centre on Tuesday informed Parliament that they had not assured the SKM of setting up a committee to provide legal guarantee on the minimum support price.
In its official statement, the SKM alleged that the Government has included five of its “loyalists”, who openly advocated the three “anti-farmer” laws, in the committee and all of them are either directly associated with the BJP-RSS or support their policies.
SKM, an umbrella body of farmers’ organisations that led the over one-year-long protest at Delhi Borders against three Central farm laws, says the Centre’s committee looks “bogus” as it did not talk about ensuring the legal rights of farmers. “By announcing this committee before the Parliament session, the Government has tried to complete the paperwork,” it said.
“The chairman of the committee is former agriculture secretary Sanjay Agarwal, who drafted all three anti-farmer bills.
He is accompanied by Ramesh Chand, a member of NITI Aayog, who was the main advocate of these three laws. The space has been left for three representatives of SKM but the Government has placed its five loyalists who openly advocated all three anti-farmer laws. All these people are either directly associated with BJP-RSS or support their policy” SKM said in a statement.
SKM leaders said that Krishna Veer Choudhary is associated with the Indian Farmers’ Society and is a leader of the BJP. Syed Pasha Patel is a former BJP MLC from Maharashtra. Pramod Kumar Choudhary is a member of the national executive of the RSS affiliated Bharatiya Kisan Sangh. Gunwant Patil, associated with the Shetkari organisation, is a WTO advocate and general secretary of the Swatantra Bharat Paksh Party. Guni Prakash has been a pioneer in opposing the farmers’ movement.
“These five people spoke openly in favor of all three anti-farmer laws and most of them have been spewing venom against the farmers’ movement,” SKM said, adding there is no mention of making a law on MSP in the agenda of the committee. That is, this question will not be placed before the committee. Some items have been put in the agenda on which the government committee is already established,” it said.
Krantikari Kisan Union president and SKM coordination committee member Dr Darshan Pal pointed out that despite Punjab leading the protests on the matter none of the experts in the 29-member committee were from the State. “We will expose the MSP committee,” said Pal.
Pal said that five representatives of farmers’ unions supported the farm laws while the SKM has been given three spots. “Many others are government officials. It seems it will be pro-Government members versus three SKM members. Sending members will create more confusion as they will hardly have any say in the committee,” he said.
In the light of these facts, there is no rationale for SKM to send its representatives to this committee. The struggle for the legal guarantee of MSP to ensure fair price for the crop to the farmers will continue.
According to the SKM, it had unanimously decided in its national meeting on July 3 that unless the government clarifies the jurisdiction and terms of reference of this committee, there is no point to nominate a representative of the SKM to the panel.
The Government on Monday formed a committee on MSP, eight months after it promised to set up such a panel while withdrawing the three contentious farm laws. Former agriculture secretary Agrawal will be the chairman of the committee. The Government has made a provision to include three members from the SKM in the panel.
Pal said the SKM wanted a committee exclusively for framing MSP for crops. “But in this committee, they have included issues such as diversification and natural farming for which separate committees are already there in the agriculture department. Why are they confusing the subject?
In a reply to Lok Sabha, whether the government had assured SKM of the constitution of a committee to provide a legal guarantee on MSP to farmers, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in a written reply said, “No Sir.”
“The Government had assured the formation of a committee to make MSP more effective and transparent, to promote natural farming and to change crop pattern keeping in mind the changing needs of the country,” Tomar told the Lok Sabha. Accordingly, a committee has been constituted consisting of representatives of farmers, central government, state governments, agricultural economists and scientists, etc, he added.