Mysore/Mysuru: Agriculture Minister B.C. Patil has said farmers with weak mind will commit suicide and diversion of their mind will prevent them from taking such an extreme step.

Talking to reporters here on Tuesday, he said that the need of the hour was to create self-confidence in farmers than going to houses of dead farmers to offer condolence or garland dead bodies. Confidence building was now being done by the BJP-led NDA Government headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to aid farmers to double their income from agriculture. In this regard, the Government of India has implemented three Farm Laws which were being opposed by a few self-claimed farmer leaders of only two or three States. 

Interestingly, the Farm Laws were not opposed by farmers but by those farm leaders who have never sold their agriculture produce in APMCs. In spite of repeated assurance by Prime Minister Modi and other Union Ministers that the Minimum Support Price (MSP) would not be scrapped, still a select group of farmer organisations were holding dharna in Delhi, he said.

Patil said the UPA Government led by Congress Party in 2008 had planned to do away with the APMCs and also included it in the party election manifesto before 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

The then Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar had convened a meeting of agriculture Ministers of all States to discuss regarding scrapping the APMC system. But now, the same party was raising hue and cry when the NDA Government implemented three Farm Laws. This was nothing but the double standard of the Congress party, he added.

Interaction with farmers

The Minister said that he would visit a village in Gundlupet taluk of Chamarajanagar district on Jan. 23 to interact with farmers for the whole day, as part of visiting villages to understand the problems of farmers and to solve them on the spot. The village name would be decided soon. 

There would be interaction with farmers from morning till evening. Even senior officials of Agriculture Department would attend, he added.

On MLC A.H. Vishwanath missing the Cabinet berth, Patil said all 17 Legislators, who had resigned to their Assembly membership two years ago, were still good friends and there is no difference of opinion among them. 

Vishwanath could not be inducted into the Cabinet on technical ground and Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa was aware of it. “Still we have a lot of respect for former MP, Vishwanath. But he should not have given anti-Yediyurappa statements in  public,” he said.

On disgruntled BJP Legislators’ visit to Delhi, the Minister did not add much importance and said they had gone to air their grievances and not to create problems for the Yediyurappa Government.