Farmers' issue : BJP demands all party meeting

New Delhi, Oct 10: The Bharatiya Janata Party today demanded the Government convene an all party meeting to consider the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers (NCF).

In a statement, BJP President Rajnath Singh said the Commission report submitted to the Government recently was significant as it also stressed the need to end the diversion of prime farmland for non-agricultural purpose such as the Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

The Government should circulate the report to all the parties and immediately convene a meeting to consider its recommendations to ''avert the worsening agrarian crisis leading to farmers' suicide in various states of the country", he said.

Calling for an urgent need to liberate the farmers from the "clutches of the moneylenders and informal credit system flourishing in the rural India at the cost of the farmer's lives and dwindling food production", he said the Government's response to the NCF report would show how sincere it was in attending to the problems of the farmers and in tackling the deepening agrarian crisis.

Mr Singh, who had been the Agriculture Minister in the NDA Government, said their Government had initiated a number of measures for the welfare of farmers that included the process of drastically reducing the rate of interests on agricultural loans and giving an idea of a fixed income for the farmers.

The BJP president appreciated the Commission's recommendations like the determination of price on the basis of market, arrangement for a fixed source of income to the farmers, market intervention scheme, bringing down the rate of interest on agriculture loan to 4 per cent, establishing an agriculture risk fund and market stabilisation fund, a knowledge power house for proper irrigation facilities and other knowledge-based requirements of the agriculture sector.

UNI