: Farmers in Haryana will on Friday block the NH44 at Shahbad if the government fails to start the procurement of parmal varieties of rice.
The farmers, led by Bhartiya Kisan Union (Charuni), had earlier on Thursday given a 24-hour ultimatum to the government to start the procurement of rice by Friday.
The farmers have been demanding the government to advance the procurement of parmal varieties by government agencies to September 22 from the scheduled October 1.
“We have urged the farmers to reach in large numbers at 10am at Shahbad and we will block the NH 44 on September 23,” Gurnam Singh Charuni, state president of BKU-C, said in a video message.
Gurnam said that thousands of quintals of paddy was lying in the mandis for the past several days but the government did not announce any schedule for the procurement yet.
He said that they had earlier given an ultimatum to the government to start the procurement from September 22 but they did not take it seriously and now the farmers were left with no other option but to block highways.
“Most of the parmal varieties take 3 months in maturing and the crop was ready to harvest but the farmers were unable to harvest their produce as there is no procurement in the mandis,” Charuni said, adding that even farmers who had harvested their crop were unable to sell their produce due to lack of buyers in mandis.
{{/usCountry}}“Most of the parmal varieties take 3 months in maturing and the crop was ready to harvest but the farmers were unable to harvest their produce as there is no procurement in the mandis,” Charuni said, adding that even farmers who had harvested their crop were unable to sell their produce due to lack of buyers in mandis.
{{/usCountry}}On the other hand, officials monitoring procurement said that the government did not announce any plan to advance procurement from October 1. Even the rain has increased the moisture content and it will take at least a week get the crop ready for procurement.