“So-called” farmer leaders inducted, says SKM and rejects the Centre’s MSP panel

A body of different farmer unions, Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), refused to accept the government’s panel on Minimum Support Price (MSP) on Tuesday. The body claimed that the panel included ‘so-called’ farmer leaders who were in favor of the now-repealed farm laws.

The committee was formed on Monday, eight months after the promise of such a committee.

The chairman of the committee will be Sanjay Agrawal, Former Agriculture Secretary, and the government has decided to include three members of SKM in the panel.

Farmer leader Abhimanyu Kohar told the news agency PTI that they held a meeting of “non-political leaders” of SKM who rejected the government’s panel. The inducted members of the panel, he said, didn’t have anything to do with their dissent against the three farm laws at the national capital’s borders.

He also said that the panel has corporate people as members. A detailed statement on SKM’s stand will be issued in the evening, the farmer leader said.

Ramesh Chand, a member of Niti Aayog, CSC Shekhar from the Indian Institute of Economic Development, Sukhpal Singh from IIM-Ahmedabad, and Naveen P. Singh, a senior member of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), will be on the panel.

The committee will include Bharat Bhushan Tyagi, a farmer who has won national award, three members from SKM, and five members from various farmer organisations, including Gunwant Patil, Krishnaveer Choudhary, Pramod Kumar Choudhary, Guni Prakash, and Sayyed Pasha Patel.

The panel includes two representatives from the farmers’ cooperative, including IFFCO Chairman Dilip Sanghani and CNRI General Secretary Binod Anand.

The group also includes chief secretaries of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, and Odisha in addition to senior members of agricultural universities and five central government secretaries.

(With inputs from PTI)

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