‘State government has woken up too late on aid for onion farmers’

MUMBAI : A day after the state announced ₹150 crore relief to onion farmers, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) ruling ally Shiv Sena took a dig at the Devendra Fadnavis-led dispensation on Friday, saying it has “woken up from slumber too late”.

The party said that though the decision to provide relief to onion farmers was good, the government needed to ensure that its implementation was done in a speedy manner.

It also alleged that the onion farmers were yet to get the financial aid that was promised to them under a similar scheme announced by the government in 2016.

The government Thursday announced ₹150 crore as relief to onion farmers. The decision by the state cabinet came amid reports about farmers selling freshly harvested onions at as low as ₹1.50 a kg in Maharashtra, the top producer of the bulb in the country.

The financial relief consists of an ex-gratia payment at the rate of ₹200 per quintal (with an upper limit of 200 quintal per onion farmer) for the kitchen staple sold between November 1 and December 15.

“Despite spending ₹1,000 per quintal as input costs to grow onions, the farmers had to sell the kitchen staple at ₹500 per quintal in the market. The prices further came down to ₹100-105 per quintal, which is ₹1-1.50 per kg,” the Sena said in an editorial in its mouthpiece ‘Saamana’.

In September, the farmers had urged the government to take immediate steps to control the decline in onion prices. But their demands went unheeded, it alleged.

“Prices of onions had similarly dipped in 2016 and the government had then announced a relief of ₹100 per quintal. However, there are allegations that the onion growers have not received the money so far. If that is true, the question that arises now is when will the farmers receive the aid of ₹200,” it said.

“The government has woken up from slumber very late. Although the decision to provide relief to onion farmers is good, it should ensure that money is disbursed on time,” the Uddhav Thackeray-led party said.

Last month, a farmer from Nashik, Sanjay Sathe, had sent ₹1,064, which he earned after selling 750 kg of his onion crop in a wholesale market, to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) as a protest. The farmer had said his intention was to prompt the government to take steps to ease the financial stress that farmers were suffering because of the low prices. The PMO had later returned the farmer’s money order.