Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, in a letter to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday, demanded that the State government guarantee wheat procurement while flagging several problems faced by wheat farmers.
She said there should be a guarantee that wheat from farmers would be procured by procurement centres till July 15.
“Wheat procurement started from April 1, but due to the corona pandemic, the purchase centres remained locked. As soon as the farmers’ wheat started reaching the procurement centres, the procurement was reduced to half,” Ms. Vadra said.
The Congress leader said she was constantly getting information from all the districts of the State that farmers were facing a lot of problems in selling their wheat produce.
In Punjab and Haryana, the government procurement of wheat accounted for 80-85% of the total production while in Uttar Pradesh only 14% of the 378 lakh tonnes of wheat had been procured by the government centres, she claimed.
The Congress leader said that though the Chief Minister had talked about extending procurement facilities to all farmers, in many villages the purchasing centres had been closed and the farmers were being ‘forced’ to travel to far away ‘mandis’. And with many parts experiencing incessant rains, she noted that there was a danger of wheat rotting due to moisture.
Ms. Vadra cited media reports about a maximum of 30 or 50 quintals of wheat being purchased from a farmer at a time across several districts and noted it as a cause of worry.
“In such a situation the farmers will be forced to sell their hard earned produce at throwaway prices,” she said.
“Due to the pandemic and inflation, the condition of the farmers is already bad and if their crop is not procured or they are forced to sell wheat at throwaway prices, it will break their back,” Ms. Vadra added.
