‘Govt ready for talks if farmers accept proposal’

NEW DELHI: Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar said on Wednesday the Union government was ready to talk to the farmers protesting against the three agricultural laws if they accept the government’s proposal to suspend the implementation of the legislations for 18 months.

“The government has been holding discussions with farmers sympathetically. Even today, whenever their response comes, the government is always ready to hold talks,” Tomar said at an event in Delhi.

Talks between the farm unions and the government were suspended in January after 11 rounds of discussions. Farm unions have stuck to their demand of a full repeal of the three laws that the government says will liberalise the country’s agri economy.

Chandigarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam, Karnataka, West Bengal and Tripura.

The Centre has fixed an MSP for the so-called common variety of paddy at ₹1,868 per quintal and for the A grade variety at ₹1,888 per quintal for the current year.

The government had initially set a total rice procurement target of 49.5 million tonnes for the entire country in the 2020-21 kharif season.

“The freeing up of storage space because of higher disbursal of subsidised grains during the pandemic has enabled the government to ramp up procurement,” said analyst Abhishek Agrawal of Comtrade, a commodities trading firm.