Cong leader flays govt over maize MSP
Tuesday, 08/07/2014
http://epaper.dailypostindia.com/Details.aspx?id=109853&boxid=59036&uid=&dat=2014-07-08
Jalandhar: Senior Congress leader and Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh on Monday said that the Punjab government was trying to wriggle out of its responsibility from buying maize crop from the farmers at the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of Rs 1300 per quintal and trying to pass the buck on the buck to the central government.
Rana reacted to the statement of Punjab Agriculture Minister Tota Singh, where he had said that the state government could hardly do anything about purchasing maize from farmers. “The role of central government was mostly limited to fixing MSP of maize and it was the responsibility of the state government to purchase produce from the farmers through various procuring agencies,” he said. The Congress leaders said that central agencies like the FCI buy only limited stocks of wheat and paddy, so the major responsibility of buying the produce for the MSP was with the state government.
He said that it was on the insistence of Punjab government to promote crop diversification that thousands of farmers had grown maize this year; however they were left in the lurch now. “The farmers were not even getting buyers for maize at a low price of Rs 1000 despite an MSP of Rs 1300 per quintal,” he added.
