Farmers to get remunerative price for wheat: Pawar

New Delhi. Members in the Lok Sabha today sought to corner the government over the issue of minimum support price (MSP) for wheat, with Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar making it clear that efforts would be made to give remunerative price to farmers. Replying to supplementaries, Pawar said the government had rejected the recommendation of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) to freeze the MSP of wheat at last year's level of Rs 1,285 per quintal. Pawar said the CACP had revised its recommendation and suggested a bonus of Rs 40 per quintal subject to liquidation of 15 million tonnes of wheat by April 2013. "The government view is that this is not the remunerative price," he said, adding that the MSP for wheat for 2012-13 has not yet been finalised. Members were critical of the CACP mechanism on deciding prices of foodgrains and wanted a greater say for them in the process. Harsimrat Kaur (Akali Dal) said "some babus" (officials) cannot decide the price of foodgrains by sitting in offices, it has to be finalised after receiving inputs from grassroots. Jagdish Sharma (JD-U) said the CACP does not have any idea of the ground reality and the Agriculture Minister should call an all party meeting on the issue of MSP for wheat. Pawar said the CACP consults state governments on input costs incurred by farmers for cultivating various crops. Several members wanted the MSP of wheat to be fixed between Rs 1,800 and Rs 2,400. He said Bihar government had given the input cost per quintal as Rs 770, Gujarat (Rs 724), Haryana (Rs 580), Himachal Pradesh (Rs 1430), Jharkhand (Rs 1719), West Bengal (Rs 1,450), Punjab (Rs 607) and Uttar Pradesh (Rs 673). "The government is yet to take a final view on this. We will make efforts to give remunerative price to farmers," Pawar said.