SC panel mulls making agriculture report public

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 22

Anil J Ghanwat, a member of the Supreme Court-appointed committee on farm laws, on Monday said the panel’s report should be made public even as he maintained that the legal issues involved should be considered.

“It has been eight months since we submitted the report after studying the three farm laws. It should now be made public…. After the government’s decision to repeal the farm laws in the coming winter session of Parliament, it (report) is not relevant with regard to the three laws…But there are other suggestions on farmers’ issues,” Ghanwat told The Tribune.

He said it was discussed in detail at a meeting held on Monday whether to make the report public or not. “The other two members gave me the freedom to take a call on this issue. I will decide after analysing the legal consequences, if any,” he said.

The three-member panel had submitted its report to the top court in a sealed cover on March 19 on measures to end the deadlock. The other two panel members are Pramod Kumar Joshi, Director (South Asia) International Food Policy Research Institute; and agriculture-economist and former chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) Ashok Gulati. The fourth member of the panel, BKU president Bhupinder Singh Mann, had recused himself.