‘Revoke gazzette on MSP committee’ Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal tells NS Tomar
Chandigarh, January 16 – Senior Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal today requested Union agriculture minister NS Tomar to revoke the gazette on constitution of committee on MSP and reconstitute it along with a fresh mandate to reflect the commitment made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while scrapping the three farm laws in 2021.
Reacting to the provision of the government gazette along with the MSP committee members list by the union minister after she raised the issue in Parliament, Badal said “the SAD rejects the MSP Committee in its current form and the same is not acceptable to the farming community also”.
Also Read: Nepal plane crash: Black box recovered
Informing the union Minister that the MSP committee was a misnomer, Harsimrat Badal said the prime minister had clearly stated that a committee would work on ways and means to make minimum support price (MSP) a legal guarantee. Instead of making this the key mandate of the Committee, the same has been changed to “making MSP more affective and transparent”.
Badal informed the agriculture minister that SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal had earlier conveyed the sentiments of the farming community to him on July 26, 2020. “The SAD president had conveyed the apprehension of farmers who felt ordinances would pave the way for doing away with assured procurement of food grains at MSP. SAD also conveyed the need to give concrete assurances on this but the same were not given”.
Badal also reminded the minister that she had opposed the three agriculture ordinances as a member of the cabinet. “I was told that all apprehensions of farmers would be taken into consideration and that the ordinances would be revised accordingly but instead of doing this, the government went ahead and tabled the three farm bills in parliament. Even then I approached BJP President J P Nadda to intercede on behalf of farmers before tendering my resignation but when nothing worked I chose to resign from the union cabinet in solidarity with the farming community”.
- With inputs from our correspondent
