CACP vacancy: Centre to soon fill two farmer representative posts

After a gap of several years, the Centre is looking to fill the vacancies of two non-official members who are representatives of the farming community in the Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP). The commission is the main minimum support price (MSP)-fixing panel of the government.

Sources said, of the two representatives, one is expected to be from Western Zone while the other may represent the interests of Northern Zone farmers. Set up in 1965, CACP is mandated to fix the MSP of more than 23 crops spread across both the kharif and rabi sowing seasons. It consists of three official members that includes the chairman and member-secretary.

That apart, the commission also has vacancies for two non-official members, who are representatives of the farming community in the country.

The commission does an elaborate exercise every year of meeting farmer groups and other stakeholders before announcing the kharif and rabi MSPs.

Despite that, the posts of non-official members were lying vacant. This had created discontent among some farmer groups as they felt that their voice wasn’t being adequately represented in the highest official price-fixing body of the government.

Reports said the last time the commission had two farmers representatives in its panel was in 2016.

Several experts and former members said that non-official members in the CACP have limited role in technical aspects like price determination. However, their presence does give a ground-level perspective to the panel.

Sources said a hunt is also on to appoint a new chairman of CACP as the tenure of current chairman Vijay Paul Sharma comes to an end in the next few months.

The search for two representatives from the farming community comes at a time when thousands of farmers, largely from North India, have been protesting against the three farm Acts of the government since the last six months.

One major demand of the protesting farmers has been to frame a law that will make it illegal for anyone to purchase crops below the state-mandated prices.