Chandigarh: Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader from Haryana Gurnam Singh on Saturday demanded that the state government must come to the aid of tomato growers as the crop's prices have crashed.
The tomato prices have crashed and farmers are not able to recover even input cost, he said.
As against prices of Rs 10 to Rs 20 per kg in retail, farmers were getting merely Rs 2-3 per kg, he said.
Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, in a statement, described the price deficit compensation scheme - Bhavantar Barpai Yojana - as a sham demanding that the government should provide a Minimum Support Price (MSP) for vegetables, maize and sunflower.
Instead of benefiting the farmers, it is causing a loss to the farmers as farmers themselves say that they have not even got the slightest benefit from the scheme, said Hooda, who is also Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly.
BKU's Singh said farmers are not getting the desired benefit of the government's price deficit compensation scheme.
There are times when there are no buyers in the mandis to buy the crop. In such cases, how will the farmers get compensated for the deficit when the crop goes unsold? The government should ensure that growers are compensated, he said.
Recently, Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda had said vegetable farmers in Haryana have been pushed to financial ruin and were not being benefited by the government's price deficit compensation scheme.
Expressing concerns over the plight of vegetable farmers across the state, the Rajya Sabha MP had claimed tomatoes, capsicum and other vegetables produced by them were not being sold and thousands of quintals of vegetables were rotting, forcing the farmers to feed these to their animals.
He had claimed the rates decided by the state government in its Bhavantar Barpai Yojana were so low that the farmers were not being able to meet the cost incurred to grow the crop.
He demanded the government should state how many farmers have been given benefit under the scheme till now and provide a list of such farmers.
Every tomato growing farmer is facing a loss of several lakhs of rupees and are forced to feed their vegetable crops to their cattle. Despite this, the government is completely indifferent to the condition of these farmers, he said.
B S Hooda said that the government should stop misleading farmers in the name of Bhavantar and decide the MSP of vegetables and this is necessary to save the farmers from facing financial ruin.
Today, vegetable growing farmers are not getting even Re 1 to 2 per kg of their produce while the consumer is paying the usual Rs 20-30 per kg for the same vegetables. Farmers from Yamunanagar to Dadri, Sonipat, Panipat, Karnal and Bhiwani are facing acute financial distress and are on the verge of bankruptcy, Hooda added.
The problem is not limited to vegetable farmers but impacts farmers of sunflower and maize and they too are victims of governmental neglect, he added.
On one hand, the government is asking farmers to grow maize instead of paddy, citing the 'Mera Pani, Meri Virasat' scheme, while on the other, they are not ready to buy maize from the farmers. Today, the mandis of Pipli, Ladwa, Baban, Kurukshetra and Ismailabad are filled with unsold maize crops.
Instead of giving MSP of Rs 1,760 to the farmers, they are forced to sell it at Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,300. The anger among the farmers is increasing, the former CM claimed.
PTI
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