Farmers protest shortage of urea, gherao DC office

BLURB: PA to Agri Minister held hostage

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Surinder Bhardwaj

Fatehgarh Sahib, December 21

Irate over shortage of urea, farmers gheraoed the office the Deputy Commissioner here and the PA to Agriculture Minister Kaka Randeep Singh, who had come here for some work, was held hostage. When the minister came to know about the incident, he sent the Agriculture Director to the spot, who too was kept there for over five hours. Both of them were released on the DC’s intervention and when the Agriculture Director promised them in writing to normalise the supply of urea within three days.

While talking to media, BKU (Sidhupur) vice-president Jasbir Singh, BKU (Kadian) district president Sarabjit Singh Amrala and other farm leaders said they had gheraoed the DC office to protest shortage of urea. They said during sowing of wheat, they faced shortage of DAP and now they were not getting urea. They alleged that the societies which get urea, supply it to favourites of the ruling party.

The protesters said they had earlier given a memorandum to the DC, demanding normalisation of urea supply by Monday but the situation did not improve. Following this, they gheraoed the DC office and held hostage the PA to the Agriculture Minister and Agriculture Director. They warned that if the supply was not normalised by December 25, they would gherao the DC office for an indefinite period.

When contacted, the Agriculture Minister said the Cooperative Department had made wrong allotment orders, which were now being corrected. He said there was no rack point for Fatehgarh Sahib, due to which the supply used to unload in Rajpura, Patiala and Nabha and the district used to get it from these points. Due to interference of SKM leaders and political leaders, the entire stock of urea at those three points was distributed there itself and the supply to Fatehgarh Sahib was hit. He said he had got a separate point for Fatehgarh Sahib from the Centre and the racks would directly be delivered there and the supply would be normalised.

Agriculture Director Gurbinder Singh said checking of cooperative societies and dealers had been initiated to check black marketing of urea. He said the state was getting less supply of urea from the Centre. Moreover, rates of urea had increased at international level and it too had affected the supply. He said the supply would be normalised in Fatehgarh Sahib within three days.