Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda on Thursday hit out at the government for allegedly duping the farmers saying the promise to double their income by 2022 has remained unfulfilled and the committee for guaranteeing Minimum Support Prices (MSP) has not been formed.
He referred to Niti Aayog member Ramesh Chand’s call on Wednesday for a “serious rethink” of MSPs and said this suggests the government is willing to follow the path to destroy the system. Hooda said it was akin to rubbing salt into the farmers’ wounds. Hooda said the wheat procurement has reached a 50-year low if it calculated on per capita availability. He added the government’s data claims the stock has been the lowest in 15 years.
“The main reason for the wheat stock to reach record low, along with the unfavourable weather, is export of over 10 million tonnes. The benefit of it was enjoyed by the traders who procured the wheat from farmers and exported it,” he said. The Centre’s procurement target was over 50 million tonnes but it procured only 18 million tonnes. He blamed the government for the “grain and farmer crisis”.