Chandigarh : The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today asked Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Convener Arvind Kejriwal not to tell white lies to befool farmers in the run up to assembly elections in Gujarat, saying the AAP government in Punjab had only promised MSP on Moong and Maize and failed to deliver on both.
In a statement here, former minister Dr Daljit Singh Cheema said it was shocking that Arvind Kejriwal was claiming in Gujarat that the AAP government in Punjab was giving MSP on five crops and that the same formula would be replicated in Gujarat. “The truth is that the central government is procuring wheat and paddy on MSP in Punjab through the Food Corporation of India. Similarly the Cotton Corporation of India procures cotton. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had urged farmers to sow Moong and promised to procure the entire crop on an MSP of Rs 7,250 per quintal but did not even procure ten per cent of this crop. The Punjab government has similarly failed to procure the maize crop leaving farmers to their fate”.
Telling Kejriwal not to give false hopes to farmers of Gujarat, Dr Cheema said the farmers should come to Punjab and see the ground reality for themselves. “The truth is that farmers have been indebted because they believed the AAP government and went in for large scale cultivation of Maize and Moong”.
The SAD leader said far from giving MSP on all crops, the Punjab government had still not given compensation to farmers whose crops had been damaged due to untimely rains. He said the government had also not given any compensation to farmers for losses suffered by them due to large scale attacks of dwarfing virus in the current paddy crop.
