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Input cost got doubled instead of farmers’ income: Bhupinder Singh Hooda
“BJP had promised to double the income of farmers in 2022, but they have ended up doubling the input cost instead,” former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda said during this visit to Kurukshetra. During his visit to Kurukshetra, Hooda also visited Pipli grain market and interacted with the potato growers
Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Saturday slammed that BJP government for “failure” to fulfil its promise of doubling income of farmers.
He alleged that due to the anti-farmer policies of the Centre and state governments the input cost got doubled in the last eight year.
“The BJP had promised to double the income of farmers in 2022, but they have ended up doubling the input cost instead,” he said during this visit to Kurukshetra.
Hooda claimed that every section, including farmers, labourers, employees, shopkeepers and traders, are troubled by this government. He sought government’s intervention to protect the interest of potato growers saying that they were being forced to sell their produce at ₹1.25 per kg against the input cost of ₹7 per kg.
During his visit to Kurukshetra, Hooda also visited Pipli grain market and interacted with the potato growers about the problems they were facing as the prices have crashed in the wholesale market and they were not even able to get the input cost.
“Even the prices of potato had gone down during the Congress government but the then government had started the export of potatoes to provide fair price to the farmers. Also, when the prices of paddy came down, the Congress government had also started paddy exports due to which farmers got record highest rate of paddy at that time,” he added.
Hooda also slammed the Bhavantar Bharpai Yojana launched by the BJP government to compensate vegetable growers if the prices fall below a certain limit, saying, “Through this scheme, the loss of a few farmers is compensated to some extent by finding an average, but most farmers are only looking at the government to compensate the total loss suffered by the farmer, instead of trapping them in the web of averages and leaving them to fend for themselves”.
“The government keeps on using new experiments like property ID and family identity card to increase the problems of the public. BPL cards of the poor and pension of the elderly are being cut in the name of family identity card,” he said.
“This is the first government in the history of the state which is working to close schools instead of opening them. Instead of recruiting, it is eliminating vacant posts. This is the reason that today about 2 lakh government posts are lying vacant in Haryana. The contract system is being promoted in the name of skill corporation and the youth are being exploited,” he said.
In response to a question of protest by sarpanches against e-tendering, Hooda once again announced his support for the sarpanches. He claimed that the government wanted to curtail the powers of the elected representatives by taking away their rights. “A new method of scam has come to the fore in the name of e-tendering. The government should hand over the command of the development of the village to the sarpanches,” he said.
