The Congress has promised legal guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) to the farmers if the INDIA alliance is voted to power after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. However, a response by the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on recommendations of the Swaminathan report has now surfaced amid the ongoing farmers' protest.
In 2010, Bharatiya Janata Party MP Prakash Javadekar in the Rajya Sabha had asked the UPA government if it had accepted the recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission regarding calculation of remunerative prices to be paid to farmers.
In response, KV Thomas, the then union minister of state for agriculture, consumer affairs, food and public distribution, had stated in a written reply,"The National Commission on Farmers under the chairmanship of Prof. MS Swaminathan has recommended the minimum support price (MSP) should be at least 50 per cent or more than the weighted average cost of production."
Police use tear gas to disperse protesting farmers gathered at the Punjab-Haryana Shambhu border during the second day of their 'Delhi Chalo' march, near Ambala, Wednesday, (PTI)
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“The recommendation, however, has not been accepted by the government because MSP is recommended by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices(CACP) based on objective criteria and considering variety of relevant factors. Hence, prescribing an increase of at least 50 per cent on cost may distort the market. A mechanical linkage between MSP and cost of production may be counter-productive in some cases”.
“Farmer brothers, today is a historic day! The Congress has decided to give legal guarantee of MSP to every farmer on crops as per the Swaminathan Commission. This step will change the lives of 15 crore families of farmers by ensuring their prosperity,” Congress MP Rahul Gandhi had said in an X post on Tuesday.
Farmers from at least 200 unions continued to march to the national capital to press their demands. A massive deployment of Delhi Police and paramilitary personnel is in place at Tikri, Singhu and Ghazipur borders to stop the protesters.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/India News/Cong promises legal MSP to farmers, had opposed in 2010 during UPA rule
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