SKM welcomes Bharat Ratna for Charan Singh, Swaminathan, slams govt for not keeping MSP promise

Samyukt Kisan Morcha welcomes Bharat Ratna for Chaudhary Charan Singh and MS Swaminathan but criticizes government's failure in providing Minimum Support Price for crops.

Samyukt Kisan Morcha on February 10 welcomed the conferring of Bharat Ratna on Chaudhary Charan Singh and MS Swaminathan but termed it an attempt to divert people's attention from government's failure to provide Minimum Support Price for crops as suggested by the Swaminathan committee. 

In a statement, the SKM also said Mr. Singh and Mr. Swaminathan will remain alive in people's memory for their contribution to farmers even without a Bharat Ratna and "denounced" Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to solve the crisis of farmers of India.

"SKM welcomes BJP government's late recognition of Chaudhary Charan Singh and due recognition of Dr. MS Swaminathan for their contribution to agriculture and farmers in conferring Bharat Ratna on them. While Chaudhary Charan Singh had a role in implementation of Zamindari Abolition in UP leading to ownership rights for peasantry, as the Chairman of the National Farmers' Commission, Dr. MS Swaminathan made recommendations for income guarantee to farmers," the SKM said in a statement.

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"However, the Modi government is honouring and decorating the leaders only to cheat the farmers and people. The PM has neither honesty nor sincerity and indulged in a poor vote catching gimmick intended to worsen farmers’ misery and use tokenism to camouflage his services to big corporate forces associated with foreign companies in farming," it said.

The SKM accused the government of indulging in many forms of tokenism to divert attention of people from its policies ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. 

"SKM denounces PM Modi for failing to solve the crisis of farmers of India. Farmers are reeling under pressure of high input cost and poor govt infrastructure and services in agriculture, including seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, electricity, diesel, irrigation, machinery, post harvest facilities, storage and cold storage facilities, marketing yards, food processing facilities, marketing," it said.