Congs flays Modi govt for urea crisis

The Congress today deplored the NDA government at the Centre for the alleged "unprecedented urea fertiliser crisis" faced by farmers across the country.
"The Modi government's complete apathy, reckless mismanagement and unpardonable mal-governance tell the sordid tale of unprecedented urea fertiliser crisis faced by crores of farmers," AICC spokesman and Congress MLA Randeep Singh Surjewala said in a statement here.
The past five months of Rabi season have been marked by blatant sale of urea in black market, police lathi-charge on helpless farmers, looting of urea stocks by mobs and distribution of the fertiliser in police stations in different states like Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, he claimed.

Instead of addressing the farmers' concern, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have been preoccupied in the game of political sloganeering and personality promotion, he said.
"It is now clear that the urea crisis occurred on account of two simple reasons - import of only 17.37 lakh tonnes of urea in the crucial period of June-October, 2014, as compared to 43.82 lakh tonnes the previous year and the failure of the Union Government to pay Rs 30,000 crore of subsidy amount to domestic urea manufacturers," he said.
Surjewala reminded Modi and BJP that they came to power riding on promises of guaranteed enumerative prices for farm produces and bringing back black money.

"...But agricultural prices have seen a free fall. Price of Basmati rice has fallen from Rs 6,000-6,500 per quintal in 2013-14 to Rs 3,200-3,300 per quintal in 2014-15. Prices of fine rice varieties of 1121 and 1509 have fallen from Rs 4,400-4,800 per quintal last year to Rs 2,200-2,400 this year. Even Cotton prices have fallen from Rs 5,300-5,500 per quintal in 2013-14 to Rs 3,800-4,000 in 2014-15," he claimed.
The Modi government's bulldozing of Land Acquisition Act through ordinance has added insult to the injury, he said.
Consequence of these lopsided anti-farmer policies is that agricultural exports of wheat, rice and corn are likely to see a decrease of nearly 29 per cent or 135 lakh tonnes in 2014-15, the Congress leader claimed.