PM responds to Badal's SOS
From T.V.Lakshminarayan
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Oct 18 — The Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, has invited the Punjab Chief Minister, Mr Parkash Singh Badal, to attend an emergency meeting here on Tuesday to discuss the crisis in the farm sector in the state as a result of the untimely, unprecedented rains.

The meeting follows a telephonic talk Mr Badal had with the Prime Minister yesterday in which he urged Mr Vajpayee to initiate immediate remedial measures to cushion the impact of the natural disaster.

The Union Food Minister, Mr Surjit Singh Barnala, told TNS that apart from the Chief Minister he would also be attending the meeting. Senior officials of the Food Corporation of India, the Centre’s procurement agency, and other related departments are also expected to attend the meeting.

The meeting on Tuesday is the earliest the Prime Minister could convene after the two holidays that followed Mr Badal’s SOS to the Centre. Today, the Prime Minister was away to Hyderabad to review the flood situation in Andhra Pradesh.

Mr Barnala said the Prime Minister would take up the points raised by the Punjab Chief Minister, including deferment of bank loans, bonus to paddy and cotton growers in the state and a long-term strategy to make the farm economy less prone to natural disasters in the future.

The Punjab Government has already sounded a "political and administrative red alert" to deal with the crisis in the farm sector because of the untimely rains.

The most urgent point in the agenda would, however, be the demand of the Punjab farmers that the procurement agencies lift rain-affected, discoloured paddy at the minimum support price. The FCI and other state procurement agencies have refused to lift paddy discoloured due to higher moisture content on the ground that it does not match the specifications laid down by the central government.

Mounds of paddy kept in the open in the grain markets of Punjab were submerged under water after rains lashed the state during the past two days.

The farmers have demanded they should be paid compensation for the difference between the minimum support price and the price at which they have had to sell their produce.

The Managing Director of the Food Corporation of India, Mr S.S. Dawra, said the procurement agencies had to go by the specifications laid down by the government as they were only the implementing agencies.

"We will await the outcome of the meeting on Tuesday and the directions of the government in this regard", Mr Dawra said. The FCI chief said the procurement of paddy till now had been satisfactory and in fact it was even better than the corresponding period in the previous year. As on the day before the holidays, the FCI alone had procured in Punjab around 27 lakh tonnes of paddy and the rice millers had lifted 25 lakh tonnes. The total procurement of 51 lakh tonnes was little more than last year, he added.