Kumari Selja raises issue of urea shortage in Haryana

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 27

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

Former Union Minister Kumari Selja, a Congress leader from Haryana, 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 there was smuggling of urea. 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.

 “This is the first time this has happened…Farmers have had to indulge in rail-roko agitations and they have been lathi-charged,” she said.

Meanwhile, Patel said 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.

Urea import was negligible between June-October last year, when the country produced merely 225 lakh tonnes of urea, which did not meet the country’s requirement of 300 lakh tones, he said.

The 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 have been hiked by a whopping ten per cent.