Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today urged the Centre to rope in eminent agricultural experts and economists to suggest ways and means to arrest the trend of constantly dwindling profits from agriculture income due to unfriendly farmer policies.The Chief Minister was replying, to a query on the Punjab being the second state after Maharashtra in farm suicides as informed by the Union Agriculture Minister during the ongoing session of Lok Sabha, at the sidelines of the swearing-in-ceremony of the newly inducted Chief Parliamentary Secretaries (CPSs) here at Punjab Bhawan this afternoon.
Mr. Badal categorically said that the state government had been making all out efforts to ensure welfare of its farmers by giving them free power and other incentives from its meager resources to make farming profession at least self-sustainable but he lamented that the rights of the farmers, who was passing through severe agrarian crisis must be safeguarded with prompt intervention of Government of India without any further delay. Mr. Badal said any complacency on this count could further add to the woes of the farmers besides putting the national food security at risk. He emphasized the need to sincerely implement the suggestions/recommendations of the agriculture economists to make agriculture far more economically viable so as to transform the destiny of the beleaguered peasantry. Thus, he urged the Centre to immediately go for structural changes in the policy framework related to agriculture for providing level playing field to the farmers, who were already at the brink of the economic disaster.
Asked to comment on the United States based NGO ‘Sikhs for Justice’(SFJ), Mr. Badal quipped though its name was quite attractive and seem democratic but actually they opposed everyone whosoever intend to share this views with the Punjabi Diaspora settled there and hardly spared anyone neither me, nor Amarinder and other political leaders from India.Rubbishing the reports regarding allegations leveled by Amarinder Singh for alleged involvement of Shiromani Akali Dal to fizzle out his foreign visit to Canada and USA, the Chief Minister retorted, “When Amarinder says anything just turn upside down to know the reality”. Mr. Badal said that he was the first one to raise voice against the foreign authorities for not giving permission to Amarinder to interact with the Punjabis settled there and even termed it undemocratic and unfair adding he said in democracy everyone has a right to express his views and the democratic values must be respected by one and all.
Justifying the need to induct of six new MLAs as Chief Parliamentary Secretaries, the Chief Minister said it was an exercise to enable the MLAs to equip themselves to have far better understanding about the democratic functioning in the government with larger responsibility. He said that it was an integrated process in parliamentary democracy to promote MLAs as CPSs and then Cabinet Ministers and eventually the Chief Minister in the elected government.On the issue of MLA Pargat Singh’s refusal to be inducted as CPS, the Chief Minister said that any political party was just like a family and MLA was its member. The Chief Minister said that Pargat Singh had some issue over a proposal of dump in his constituency, which was later on dropped and there was no question of any disquiet or unhappiness with the party and if he still nurtured some grouse in his mind that too would be resolved amicably at the party level, added Mr. Badal.