“State government was in touch with the Prime Minister to resolve farm crisis and sought immediate intervention of the Centre to form a high level committee of farm experts to pull the economy from the current agrarian crisis,” Badal said.
He accused the successive Congress governments at the Centre of formulating “anti-farmer policies” which “have been forcing” the beleaguered farmers to end their lives.
“Congress-led governments at the Centre for over six decades have absolutely ignored the hardships faced by the farmers,” he alleged.
At a Sangat Darshan programme in Lambi Assembly constituency, the Chief Minister said the state government had hardly any role in fixing the costs of agriculture inputs like diesel, pesticides, fertilizers and even the Minimum Support Price (MSP), which primarily fell within the domain of the Centre.
He said the state government had initiated “certain steps to put the derailed agrarian economy back on track by way of giving subsidy to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore annually to PSPCL” in return of free power in the farm sector and enhancing the natural calamity fund from Rs 3,400 to Rs 8,000 per acre.
Badal said the state government has started first-of-its-kind scheme to provide interests free crop loans worth Rs 50,000 to the farmers.
“In a “historic decision” it has been decided that all the farmers would be provided a health insurance cover of Rs 50,000 and an insurance of Rs 5 lakh in case of accidental death or incapacitation of head of family,” he said.
Terming the ‘Punjab Dialogue’ programme started by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as a “flop show”, he said AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal was “least concerned” about the rights of the state, which was evident from the fact of submitting an affidavit in the Supreme Court by the Delhi government regarding the river waters.
PTI