Stir for MSP law to gain momentum ahead of 2024 LS polls: Farmer leader
MEERUT: Farmer leader VM Singh has formed a front to press for a law guaranteeing payment of minimum support price (MSP) to cultivators for their produce, a key demand raised during the 13-month farmers’ agitation in 2020-21 against three agri reform laws that were later repealed.
A massive movement on the MSP issue will gain momentum ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, Singh said on Friday.
Singh was elected national president of MSP Guarantee Kisan Morcha on November 10 and Rajaram Tripathi was chosen its spokesperson. The Morcha claims the support of 223 farmer organisations from 27 states.
Morcha activists have been directed to form village level committees to make farmers aware of the issue, Singh said.
The Morcha has coined the slogan “Gaon Gaon MSP, Har
Ghar MSP,” he said.
Singh also said slogans related to MSP would be written on tractor trollies and walls in villages. Morcha activists have already launched this campaign in villages of Saharanpur, Bijnor, Hapur and other districts, he said.
The Morcha also has directed its leaders to decide the dates for conferences on MSP in their respective areas. The first such conference would be held at Pune, Maharashtra on December 1 and thereafter in Punjab on December 10. The Punjab venue has not been decided yet.
Copies of resolutions passed in village panchayats on the MSP issue would be handed over to the Prime Minister’s Office on the occasion of “Shaheed Diwas” on March 23 next year.
The Bhartiya Kisan Union also has announced that MSP is a major demand of farmers.
“Farmers need adequate price of their crops and that is possible only by giving them guarantee of MSP,” BKU leader Rakesh Tikait has said.
Tikait has given a call to farmers to show their strength during an agitation in Lucknow on November 26.
The Sanyukt Kisan Morcha has given a call for the agitation at state capitals across the country to raise the MSP demand. BKU’s Hapur district president Dinesh Khera and his counterpart in Muzaffarnagar Yogesh Sharma said farmers would participate in the agitation in large numbers.