New Delhi, February 16
Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to include the damage to crops due to sever cold under the list of natural calamities and sought an immediate relief of Rs 178.18 crore to the state for providing compensation to the mustard growing farmers.
Mr Hooda called on Prime Minister here and apprised him about the massive damage caused to the entire mustard crop by severe-cold wave in the state which was in flowering or podding stage.
He said an area of nearly 10 lakh acres was affected severely and yield losses in the range of 25-100 per cent had been caused. He said the area in which the crop had been completely damaged and crop failure complete was estimated to be 370000 acres.
The state Chief Minister said that mustard was the main Rabi oilseed crop of the state and was mainly cultivated in southern Haryana. On the low MSP recently announced by the Centre, Mr Hooda said Haryana had been recommending to the Centre to fix remunerative MSP for all agricultural commodities in order to safeguard the interests of farmers.
He
urged the Prime Minister that keeping in view the higher cost of production, the MSP for wheat should be increased to Rs 760 per quintal as the Haryana Government had already
recommended to the Union Ministry of Agriculture.
Stating that the MSP had begun to fall short of even the cost of production, he said the clubbing of MSP of fine and superfine varieties of paddy had worked to the disadvantage of the farmers of Haryana. He urged the Prime Minister that the fine and superfine varieties of paddy should not be clubbed in one group and MSP should be fixed separately for fine and superfine varieties.
Mr Hooda said the superfine variety (Basmati) occupied about 50 per cent area in Haryana and the entire produce was sold on premium and was generally procured by the private players because the Central agencies procured paddy only on MSP.
The Chief Minister said the number of categories or varieties in cotton be reduced in order to avoid confusion and exploitation of farmers. He said MSP of cotton should be announced for staple length as was done in case of sugarcane in terms of standard sugar recovery. He said the varieties notified for Haryana and Punjab were no more grown in these states and the MSP for the same varieties was more in Punjab (Rs 1835) and less in Haryana (Rs1760).
Mr Hooda requested that the varieties or hybrids notified by the Centre should be clubbed into three or four categories and staple length linked MSP should be announced at the same level for all the states.
