RS adopts Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill

New Delhi, Aug 21 (UNI) The Government today assured the Rajya Sabha that it had uppermost the interests of farmers -- the backbone of the country -- at heart whenever taking decisions relating to agriculture-related issues.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, however, told members that certain harsh decisions had to be taken to ensure food security -- and in this both the Centre as well as the States had to work hand- in-hand to ensure that the Indian Farmer did not feel cheated.

Shedding light on recent decisions which allowed agriculturists to sell their produce in whichever market they chose to, the Minister observed that now the farmers could sell at the price which suited them best -- as a result, quite often they opted for the open market sales as against sales to Government Procurement Agencies.

Addressing concerns over rising food grains prices, the Minister assured that such phenomena were ephemeral -- but being part of the global economy, India, too, would be affected by price fluctuations.

A spike in wheat prices in the Chicago Grains Market had resulted in a sympathetic hike in markets elsewhere with India, too, witnessing a sharp rise.

This, Minister Pawar, maintained was momentary -- and shall pass.

Earlier, the Minister introduced the related Essential Commodities (Amendment) Bill, 2005 which seeks to amend the existing provisions that allow for insertion and deletion of items from the list of essential commodities.

Moving the Bill for consideration of the house, Minister Pawar informed the members that the demand was first raised at the May 21, 2001 meeting of Chief Ministers of several states where the need for an amendment was felt.

Pointing out that 11 commodities were deleted from the list of essential commodities in 2002 and three commodities in 2004, the Minister said certain commodities could not be deleted through a notification even though the Government considered it necessary due to improved demand and supply position.

He said the proposed amendment sought to delete from the ambit of the Bill some items including cattle fodder, coal, component and auto parts, iron and steel, and paper, among others.

In their stead, it was proposed to insert a new section 2 (a) which provided that the essential commodities listed in the proposed Schedule were, namely, drugs, fertilisers, foodstuffs, including edible oilseeds and oil, hank yarn, petroleum and petroleum products, raw jute and jute textiles, seeds of food crops and seeds of fruits and vegetables, seeds of cattle fodder and jute seeds.

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