Centre wants to end assured government procurement on MSP: Harsimrat Badal

Former Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Tuesday said that it was increasingly becoming clear that the Central government wanted to end assured government procurement on minimum support price (MSP) for food grains from the forthcoming wheat harvesting season itself by putting a new condition of uploading of land records for procurement.

Talking to reporters in Chandigarh, Harsimrat Badal, who had put up a question relating to FCI asking for land record details for providing e-payment directly to farmers, said: “This is a discriminatory step against farmers of Punjab who brought in the green revolution in the country and made it food surplus.” She said that the hidden agenda was to limit procurement from Punjab by opening it to all farmers who upload their land records.

Badal said that the Congress government in Punjab was hand in glove with the Centre on this issue. “This has been made clear by Union minister Piyush Goyal who quoted a document showing the Punjab finance minister as well as the food and supplies minister had given their go ahead to the condition for making uploading of land records mandatory for government procurement in the state. The Punjab government also agreed to the Union government’s decision to provide e-payment directly to farmers.”

The Bathinda MP also took on Union minister Piyush Goyal and accused him of lying on the floor of the House by claiming that the SAD was party to the new rules being framed by FCI. She said that this was nothing but an attempt to defame the SAD, which was fighting for the cause of the farmers. “The SAD broke its alliance with the NDA in solidarity with farmers. We even quit the ministry. We will continue to fight to ensure farmers get justice and attempts to end the MSP regime along with assured procurement are defeated. We will not allow attempts to break up agricultural mandis and agricultural infrastructure which was created in Punjab with the contribution of the SAD to go to waste”.