Pawar flays Maharashtra, Centre for onion price crash

NCP leader Sharad Pawar on Thursday criticised the central and state governments over the issue of falling prices of onion

Pune: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar on Thursday criticised the central and state governments over the issue of falling prices of onion.

NCP leader Sharad Pawar on Thursday criticised the central and state governments over the issue of falling prices of onion. (HT)

“When I was the agriculture minister, we used to intervene in such situation and procure onion through National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (Nafed). The government is not doing it,” he said.

Chief minister Eknath Shinde on Thursday wrote to Union minister Piyush Goyal and demanded to procure 0.2 million metric tonnes of onion from the market to help stabilise the market.

Shinde said, “As the onion rates are less and farmers not getting money equal to production cost, they are suffering. The Maharashtra government has written to the central government to intervene.”

Pawar said, “The government’s agricultural policies are not good. They banned the export of broken rice, sugar and other things. It was a good opportunity for farmers to get money and even get international market for Indian commodities. But the policies are not constant.”

The NCP chief has appealed to the central and state governments to increase vaccination for lumpy skin disease (LSD) in animals. He said as Maharashtra carried out better vaccination as compared to other states last year, it reported less cattle lost to the disease.