Implement Swaminathan panel suggestions: Farmers
Kuldeep Chauhan
TribuneNewsService
Shimla, March 6
The state government should implement the recommendations of the Dr MS Swaminathan Commission Report and allot wasteland, shamlat and fallow land to small and marginal farmers, who constitute about 70 per cent, demand farmers.
“We welcome the high court direction to the state government to implement the Swaminathan report submitted to the Centre between December 2004 and October 2006”, said Dr Kuldip Tanwar, state president, Himachal Kisan Sabha.
“We have been pressing upon the state government to implement the report and allot wasteland and shamlat land to farmers to make agriculture a viable profession”, he said.
It was unfortunate that the state government had made no serious efforts to change the nomenclature of wasteland, which was wrongly entered as forest land, Dr Tanwar said.
“If the joint family partition is taken into account, the land holding per family comes less than five bighas”, he added.
The Swaminathan commission has recommended that the landless farmer should be allotted at least one acre per household.
“The commission has recommended the distribution of the ceiling-surplus and waste lands to farmers”. The report has cited the example of Baramati, Maharashtra, observing that then Chief Minister Sharad Pawar in 1991 had allotted the wasteland to farmers by bringing it under the employment guarantee scheme. The good-quality grapes were exported and the Baramati grapes industry processed about 7,500 tonnes of grapes, said members of the Kisan Sabha.
