Agriculture crisis: CLP Jakhar seeks agricuture minister’s resignation

Punjab: Sunil Jakhar leader of Punjab Congress Legislature Party required on Wednesday the resignation of state agriculture minister Tota Singh to saying even the Akali-Bhartiya Janta Party government has not right to be in power. Because farmers are suffering from financial crisis for agriculture today in the BJP government’s working period. Jakhar was speaking in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha on the resolution of agricultural crisis that parliamentary affairs minister Madan Mohan Mittal had moved to express concern over the financial crisis in agriculture and how farmers could be bailed out at the earliest. The resolution said the Punjab government should take up the matter with the Centre and get farmers remunerative price and insurance cover for their crops. Jakhar told alone from the Congress members for about an hour, said it would have been better if the agriculture minister had moved the resolution, “but perhaps he was not confident enough to defend the state farmers are in”. “He has failed to punish officers in the pesticide-and-seed scam and so he should quit,” the leader of the Opposition said. Pointing at chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, Jakhar said that since September 22 last, he (Badal) had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi eight times to seek his intervention to solve farmers’ problems but the latter had not responded even once. “When the prime minister came to Ferozepur on March 23, instead of seeking a financial package for Punjab, he (Badal) only praised the new system of devolution of taxes to the states and claimed it would bring loads of money to Punjab, which didn’t happen,” said the Congress leader. “It’s easy to say ‘Achhe din aa gaye’, but in reality, farmers’ land is being hypothecated and mortgaged every day,” said the Congress leader. On the whitefly crisis in Punjab, he said it was manmade and not a natural calamity as being made out to be and officials responsible and reporting directly to Badal had been rewarded and not punished. Jakhar said none of the insect powder distributed among farmers to kill whitefly was ever tested in Punjab. “Moreover, it was sold to famers for far more than the open-market price. In my constituency, a chief agricultural officer made `5,000 from each insect powder dealer,” he alleged.