Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Traders stage protest against proposed change in APMC Act

Staff Correspondent

They submit memorandum addressed to Chief Minister

FARMERS UNITE: Members of the Karnataka Pranta Raitha Sangha staging a dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office in Gulbarga on Saturday.

GULBARGA: Members of the Karnataka Pranta Raitha Sangha (KPRS) on Saturday staged a dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner's office here in protest against the proposed amendment to the Agriculture Produce and Marketing Committee (APMC) Act.

The protesters, led by KPRS president Maruti Manpade, who is also a member of the State secretariat of the Communist Party of India (CPI), submitted to the district authorities a memorandum addressed to the Chief Minister stating that the proposed amendment was not only anti-farmer but also anti-retail traders. It was also loaded in favour of private companies and multi-national companies (MNCs), it said.

The memorandum said that incidents of farmers' suicides would increase after the amendment, as it would effectively end the Government's obligation to intervene in the market whenever the prices of agriculture produce crashed. The proposed amendment transferred the power of fixing these prices to private and multi-national companies, and the Government would have no further role to play in this regard, it said.

Contract farming and forward trading were also proposed under the amendment, which would affect the food security situation in the country, the memorandum said.

It said MNCs would insist on the production of commercial crops, for which there is a greater demand in the international market, rather than the conventional foodgrains and pulses that farmers cultivated.

The KPRS urged the State Government to take all these factors into consideration and withdraw the proposal in the interest of the farmers and small retail traders, who would be forced by the big players to quit the market if the amendment was brought in.

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