Badal demands rs 1,800 per quintal msp for wheat

Gill Saab

Yaar Malang
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal demanded that the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat be fixed at Rs1,800 per quintal for 2012-13 to account for the increase in the cost of agricultural inputs, which has put a burden of Rs 800 crore on the peasantry.
In a statement, the Chief Minister said that the demand was based on a study on the impact of recent hike in prices of farm inputs conducted by the experts of the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. Badal described as “ cold-blooded and inhuman” the Centre’s opposition to the already inadequate recommendations by the Commission on Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP), which had asked the Union Ministry of Agriculture to raise the MSP by 10 per cent. “Have the costs of agricultural inputs gone up by just 10 per cent? Also has the increase in the prices of essential commodities risen only by that margin? If not, then what is the basis for a highly discriminatory MSP of wheat,” asked Badal.
 
Top