In letter to Dhankhar, farm bodies list promises made by Centre, PM

The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (Non-political) and Kisan Mazdoor Morcha (KMM) today sent a letter to Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar mentioning the promises made by the Government of India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the farmers on various issues, including grant of MSP as per recommendations of the Swaminathan Commission report, which have remained unfulfilled.

SKM (Non-political) convener Jagjit Singh Dallewal, whose indefinite fast entered its 10th day at the Khanauri border morcha today, urged farmers to maintain peace at any cost. He said the government now had no other way to defeat the morcha, except for using heavy police force to remove him and others from the Khanauri site.

Dallewal said a couple of days ago, Dhankhar had asked Union Agriculture Minister Shivraj Chauhan “if any promise was made to the farmers, and why it had not been fulfilled”. The minister had not given any statement in this regard so far, he added.

The farm leader said in the letter to the VP, they had mentioned that when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the CM of Gujarat and chairman of the Centre’s Consumer Affairs Committee, he had submitted a report to the then PM Dr Manmohan Singh, recommending that farmers should not be given rates of crops below the MSP.

Dallewal stated that during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Modi had promised to farmers that if he formed the government at the Centre, the Cabinet would decide in its first meeting that farmers be given rates of crops as per the Swaminathan report. On the other hand, the Union Government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court in 2015, stating that the rates of crops as per the Swaminathan Commission report could not be given to the farmers at any cost, he added.

He said in the last week of March 2018, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had given the farmers in writing that the government would give rates of crops to the farmers within three months as per recommendations of the commission report. The promise was not fulfilled yet, he added.

At the time of culmination of farmers’ protest in 2021, the Centre had made some commitments to protesting farmers, including compensation to Lakhimpur Khiri violence victims, withdrawal of cases registered against farmers during their protest, no FIR against farmers for burning paddy straw and no tabling of the Electricity Bill in the Parliament. None of these commitments was honoured, said Dallewal.

He said formation of a committee to grant legal guarantee on MSP was another commitment made to farmers in 2021 by the Centre. Farmers had been betrayed on the issue, he added. He hoped that the VP would initiate some step in this direction.