Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday urged prime minister Narendra Modi to reconstitute the committee on the minimum support price (MSP) for crops by giving due representation to Punjab.
In a letter written to Modi, home minister Amit Shah and Union agriculture minister Narendra Tomar, he said that it was ironic that the state which had most successfully implemented MSP since the initiation of this scheme had now been kept out of the committee.
Mann pointed out that the Union government had recently constituted the committee regarding MSP under the chairmanship of former IAS officer Sanjay Aggarwal which had several experts and senior officers from various states as its members, but there was none from Punjab.
The chief minister said that Punjab had played a vital role in making the country self-sufficient in food grains by contributing about 35-40 % of wheat and 25-30% of rice to the Central pool in the last about one decade. He said it was worth mentioning that nearly 60-62 million tonnes of wheat and rice, most of which were produced by the farmers of the state, were distributed every year to about 800 million people of the country at highly subsidised rates under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013.
Mann further wrote that during 2021-2022, out of total global rice exports of about 54 million tonnes, India contributed about 21.5 million tonnes (about 40% of total export) for which Punjab contributed towards the rice exports, despite the fact that paddy is not the staple food of Punjabis.
He said keeping in view the role of Punjab in ushering the green revolution and making the country food grain surplus, due representation must be given to the state by reconstituting the MSP.
