Centre must consider Punjab's plea for package for farmers:Badal

Chandigarh, Aug 3 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today asked the Centre to treat the grave crisis facing the farm sector as ''an impending national calamities requiring extraordinary response''.

Presiding over a seminar relating to the problems of the farmers organized by the Bharti Kisan Union (Rajewal Group) here at Kisan Bhawan, Mr Badal expressed the hope that the Centre would soon come to the rescue of suicide affected families in order to bail out the beleaguered peasantry.

Mr Badal demanded a major share from the total Central budget of Rs.25, 000 crore earmarked for the agriculture sector. He said probably it was first time that the Chief Ministers of the agrarian states had succeeded in prevailing upon the Centre for getting the highest ever budgetary allocation for the agriculture after the marathon discussions during the National Development Council's meeting on agriculture under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held at Delhi recently.

Expressing concern over the sad plight of the farmers, Mr Badal said that it was only due to the wrong and anti-farmer policies of the Centre that the farmers were in quandary. He said he had been tirelessly advocating the case of State's peasantry that the MSP must be linked with consumer price index because the ever widening gulf between the cost of agricultural inputs and the MSP had resulted the farming a non profitable venture and this trend must be reversed to save the farmers from exploitation. He announced to setup a committee of three economists under the chairmanship of an eminent economist Dr Ranjit Singh Ghuman to compile a comprehensive report since 1960 till today about the difference between the cost of agricultural inputs and MSP, which would be submitted to Centre in support of our claim that how the Punjabi farmer has been exploited due to the illogical and unpractical policies of the Centre. He also announced to be setup another committee consisting of government officers and representatives of farmer associations under the chairmanship of BKU leader Mr Balbir Singh Rajewal to sort out the demands of the farmers raised in today's meeting within a month.

UNI