New Delhi: The farmers union on Tuesday opposed the MSP Committee meeting scheduled for next week calling the panel a ‘farce’. It claims that there will be no conclusive results from the upcoming talks.
The farmer union leaders said that it had already rejected the ‘anti-farmers panel’ and will be not attending the August 22 meeting. “We have already rejected the panel and we have clearly said that we will not be participating in the talks. So there is no question of participating in the upcoming meeting, SKM leader Hannan Mollah said.”
Sources also report that the leaders have demanded the centre withdraw cases registered against farmers during the anti-farm laws protest last year, and provide compensation to the families of farmers who lost their lives during the stir.
The MSP deciding committe is scheduled to hold a meeting on August 22ndn to discuss future strategies. In the first meeting at National Science Complex in Delhi, the committee headed by former agriculture secretary Sanjay Agrawal, will introduce members, deliberate future strategies and discuss the setting up of sub-panels to cover the wide issues mentioned.
PM Modi while repealing the three farm laws in 2021, had promised to set up a committee to look into farmers’ MSP issues. It was in July this year the committee was constituted to “promote zero budget-based farming,” to change crop patterns keeping in mind the changing needs of the country, and to make MSP more “effective and transparent.”
There are 26 members in the committee, including a chairman, and three membership slots have been kept aside for representatives of SKM.