Farmers Movement Archive

Yogi asks farmers to be wary of selfish elements

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday alleged the Opposition parties were misleading farmers over the Centre’s three new agriculture reform laws.At the same time, he said it was after 70 years of independence that the Centre and the state had got such governments that were committed to doubling the income of farmers and ensuring their welfare. The chief minister was speaking at a farmers’ conference organised under the Mission Kisan Kalyan on the Government Agriculture School campus in Gorakhpur.He apprised farmers of the work done by the Modi government at the Centre and the Bharatiya Janata Party government (BJP) in the state in the interest of the cultivators.He asked farmers to be wary of vested interests and selfish elements who, he said, always misled the farmers and used them for their ulterior motives.“The same people are behind the conspiracy to mislead the peasants who, while in power, did not do anything for the welfare of farmers,” he said.“Such elements used them to make a fortune of their own but allowed farmers to languish in penury and debt,” Yogi Adityanath alleged. He also said those who misled the farmers had always been habitual liars.“These people spread the lie that farm land will be grabbed by contract farming. PM Modi has already made it clear that contract farming is just another option, not an obligation. The farmers have all the freedom to sell their produce anywhere to earn more profit from the market,” he said.“Can anyone tell whether a farmer’s land was grabbed by contract farming? In contract farming, no one can occupy the land of the farmer. The farmer is the owner of his land,” he said.He also allayed fears that mandis would be closed.“Not a single mandi was closed since June 2020, when the farm laws were brought, but a deliberate misinformation campaign has been run to misguide the farmer,” he said.“In fact, mandis were added under the “e-NAM” concept of One Nation One Market, while action is being taken to add over 1,000 more mandis,” he said.When the Opposition parties were in power they either closed or sold sugar mills, he alleged. By contrast, the BJP government set up new sugar mills in Pipraich and Munderwa in east UP, he said. On the other hand, the governments of the SP (Samajwadi Party) and the BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) sold or closed sugar mills of Kushinagar, Deoria and Maharajganj, the chief minister said.“The sugarcane farmers had thousands of crores of rupees of arrears while the current government has made a record payment of ₹1.27 lakh crore to them,” he said.Yogi also said the Central and the state government were of the definite view that “if the farmers are happy, then the village will be prosperous, and the prosperity of the village-farmer will pave the way for the prosperity of the country.”For the first time, the country got such a government in 2014 that did unprecedented work for the welfare of farmers and included them in the agenda of the country’s politics, he said.“Soil health test cards, payment of one and a half times the MSP, PM Kisan Samman Nidhi and farmers’ loan waiver scheme — these are some of the landmark welfare endeavours for the farmers under the guidance of PM Modi,” he added.The farmers were also provided a security cover of ₹5 lakh under the Chief Minister’s Farmer Accident Insurance, while the pending irrigation projects were completed to increase the productivity of farming, he said.Last year, 68 lakh metric tonnes of paddy was procured at MSP (minimum support price) in Uttar Pradesh and ₹66,000 crore was paid directly into the accounts of the farmers. As many as 2.42 crore farmers in the state received more than ₹27,000 crore under PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, he said.

Hindustan Times

21-03-2021

Lucknow