"Focus Was On Support Price": Bhupinder Hooda Defends Congress Policy

Misconceptions are being spread about the Congress policy on farmers during the UPA rule, senior party leader and former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder SIngh Hooda said today. The Congress policy has been called into question by the BJP, which claimed that the party was contradicting it just to incite farmers and oppose the government. During the UPA rule, the Congress and Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party supported what are now key provisions of the farm laws, the BJP claimed, adding that most of these were part of the recommendations of a couple of committees headed  by Mr Hooda.  

The Congress, Mr Hooda said, had always supported the farmers, but its policy was always geared towards the Minimum Support Price -- the price guaranteed by the government -- which has no place in the NDA's new farm laws.  

Talking of the recommendations made by a committee he headed, Mr Hooda said a key one was that there has to be market purchase centres close to the farmers' production areas.

With the Congress backing the farmers' protest since it started in September, the BJP had hit out yesterday, accusing all opposition parties of having "shameful double standards".  

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the repeal of the APMC Act was part of the 2019 manifesto of the Congress and the party had promised to get it done within six months.

Contract farming had also started during the Manmohan Singh government in many Congress states, the minister said.

Quoting government sources, news agency Press Trust of India reported that in a report submitted in December 2010, the committee led by Mr Hooda, who was the Chief Minister of Haryana at the time, said, "The market for agricultural produce must be immediately freed of all sorts of restrictions on movement, trading, stocking, finance, exports, etc. No monopoly, including that of APMC or corporate licenses, should be allowed to restrict the market." Hooda with a copy of the same report today held a press conference at the congress headquarters explaining this was done with safeguards and a clear linkage to the Minimum support price .

The committee had also said that the concept of farmers' markets, where farmers can freely sell to the consumers directly must be promoted, sources claimed.

The committee had suggested that the states adopt a model agricultural marketing law circulated in 2003 -- a critical reason being agriculture was a state subject and the new farm bills are being seen as infringement into the state's right even though the Centre has tried to use movement of goods and produce inter-state to make the new act.

"The model act provides for alternative marketing channels to the farmers...  States need to adopt these reforms, operationalise them and in fact go beyond the measures proposed in the model law to provide a free and competitive market to farmers," the committee had said.  

Mr Hooda was heading a working group on agriculture production in 2013, which also had the Chief Ministers of Punjab, Bengal and Bihar. An outcome of the deliberations of the Chief Ministers' meeting with the Prime Minister.

The reforms recommended by these committees are part of the three farm laws that the party is opposing now, the BJP had said.