Badal asks Centre to set up high-powered committee on prices of crops

Batting for implementation of the Swaminathan formula for fixing the prices, the chief minister said the formula stipulates cost plus 50% profit to benefit the farmers

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday termed the prevalent system for price fixation of crops as 'redundant' and demanded the Centre must set up a high-powered committee on fixing the prices of crops, besides evolving ways and means to make agriculture a remunerative preposition.

Interacting with the media on the sidelines of a political conference to mark the Baisakhi festival in Bathinda, Badal said the existing mechanism wherein the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) fixes the price of crops every year was obsolete and the need of the hour was to form a high-powered committee comprising agri-experts, officers and other imminent persons to bail out the farmer from the current agrarian crisis.

He said besides fixation of the prices of the crops, the committee must also be entrusted with the task of rejuvenating agriculture through extensive research and design activities. Badal said he would soon formally take up this issue with the Union government.

Batting for implementation of the Swaminathan formula for fixing the prices, the chief minister said the formula stipulates cost plus 50 per cent profit to benefit the farmers.

He said as it was an important part of the Bharatiya Janata Party manifesto in general elections, the National Democratic Alliance government would implement it soon. "The farmers cannot be saved by giving nominal MSPs (minimum support price) to them as recommended by the arm chair agri-experts, while sitting in their cozy offices in New Delhi, but the MSP must be fixed according to the Swaminathan formula if the country's food security is to be preserved," said Badal.

Batting for the MSP mechanism for the procurement of crops, the chief minister said any move of parting away from it could prove detrimental for the country. He said agriculture was the backbone of the economy and any move to abolish the MSP system could break this vital component of Indian economy.