Ajit Singh lambasts Kelkar report on agriculture tax issue

Driven by political compulsions, the Union Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh has said the idea of taxing agriculture as put forward by the Vij...

Driven by political compulsions, the Union Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh has said the idea of taxing agriculture as put forward by the Vijay Kelkar Committee is not practicable. He alleged that the union finance ministry was unnecessarily delaying the approval of the Rs 3,560 crore drought package worked out by his ministry.

He said the rapeseed and mustard crop in Rajasthan was at a critical stage in Rajasthan due to drought and its output this year was likely to decline. This may lead to an increase in imports of edible oils. He said the minimum support prices (MSPs) for rabi crops would be announced shortly.

Inaugurating a national seminar on methodological issues in fixation of MSPs in the capital on Wednesday, the Minister said that the drought relief proposals were still languishing in the North Bloc. He assured that he would raise this issue again in the next meeting of the Union Cabinet.

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The Cabinet was unable to take a decision on the drought relief package as the finance ministry had not yet given its comments on the proposal, he said.

He said with great difficulty the Centre agreed to recapitalise the cooperative banks and that too with major investments to be made by the states. He opined that this type of step motherly treatment to agriculture and rural sector by the Centre had to be resisted.