Selja raises urea shortage issue

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 27

Hitting out at the BJP government, senior Congress leaders Kumari Selja and Ahmed Patel today raised the issues related to farmers in the country, particularly “acute shortage of urea”, which they said, were adding to the distress of the farming community.

Selja cited instances of how women in her state had to queue up in police stations to seek coupons for urea. “This has happened for the first time,” she said, terming the situation “deplorable”.

Demanding timely imports to bridge the deficit, Selja said urea import was “barely 17.37 lakh tonnes in June-October 2014-15 as compared to 42.82 lakh tonnes in the previous fiscal”.

According to Selja, the situation was so bad that “smuggling of urea was taking place”. Demanding immediate measures to ensure quicker imports, she said farmers were “already under the sword of the Land Acquisition Bill” and shortage of fertilisers had added to their distress. “For the first time farmers had to indulge in rail-roko agitations and they have been lathi-charged,” she said.

Meanwhile, as per Patel, farmers across the country were facing acute shortage of urea and being forced to procure it from the black market at exorbitant prices, which were 300 times higher. “The Prime Minister talks about land health card. When there is no urea, how is it going to help?” he said

He said no import took place during June-October last year, when merely about 225 lakh tonnes of urea was produced in the country which was barely able to meet the consumption requirement of 300 lakh tonnes.

Latest Rail Budget provision of hiking rail freight charges on urea was like “adding salt to their injury” as farmers in Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, Maharashtra, Gujarat and other parts continue to suffer, he said, adding the freight charges had been hiked by a whopping ten per cent.