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Govt sails thru Cong(I) motion

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, Nov. 22

THE Government today comfortably sailed through the adjournment motion moved by the Congress(I) on the crisis being faced by the country's farming community.

The adjournment motion in the Lok Sabha was defeated by a wide margin with 139 members voting in favour and 248 voting against the motion.

The Agriculture Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, debunked the Opposition's charge on the Government's failure to resolve the ccrisis, even as the Congress demanded a white paper on tariff protection for agricultural and processed food products in the period af ter April 2001 when quantitative restrictions on imports are to be fully dismantled.

Moving an adjournment motion, the Congress President, Ms Sonia Gandhi, took cudgels against the Government for its failure to come up with suitable policy prescriptions to resolve the crisis in the agriculture sector where public investment has virtually dried up.

She also charged the ruling BJP Government for adopting a ``callous'' attitude to the requests for financial assistance from States which have been hit by drought and floods this year.

``The Government does not seem to be concerned at all about the ccrisis and has severely neglected agriculture'', she held, while pointing out that the horticulture sector and dairy industry are being threatened by ``mindless imports''"

Ms Gandhi maintained that the Government had grossly let down farmers even in the green revolution regions such as Punjab, Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh, Haryana.

Hardly any assistance from the Centre was forthcoming for drought hit States such as Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra. So was the plight of flood-hit States including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, she said.

The Congress President held that the Government needed to be taken to task for neglecting its primary duty towards the tiller, while demanding a fair deal for the farming community.