Chandigarh, April 1 Veteran Congress leader and former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda on Tuesday said unnecessarily harassing farmers has become the ruling BJP’s policy in the state.
He said poor management of crops and deliberate indifference towards farmers forces them to sell crops below the minimum support price (MSP).
"Every season, there is a deliberate delay in starting the crop procurement. Also, there is no arrangement of gunny bags in markets, nor for lifting, due to which farmers have to bear the brunt. Every time, they have to wait for several days to sell their crop. Most of the farmers have to sell their crop to private agencies at a rate much lower than the MSP," he said in a statement.
Hooda said the government has announced to start wheat procurement from April 1, but as usual, somewhere tenders were not made for it lifting, and somewhere gunny bags were not given to commission agents.
"Due to the lack of lifting, every time the crop piles up in the mandis," he said.
"Farmers do not even get a place to keep their crop. Not only this, but the delay in lifting also leads to a delay in the payment to farmers. The government deliberately sits on payments worth hundreds of crores of rupees. But the government, which takes interest from farmers for every minute, does not pay even a single penny of interest to the farmers despite the delay in payment for many days and many months,” he said.
Hooda said this time also, the BJP government is not paying any attention to the purchase of crops and the convenience of farmers. "There has not been any tender for lifting in any market and purchase centre of Panipat till now. The cleaning of the market is also half-finished. The water cooler that supplies drinking water to the farmers is also lying broken," he added.
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