Union Agriculture Minister says there was no ban on purchase of seeds with the (scrapped) Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. Instead the statistics shows that the purchase of seeds increased after demonetisation.
PTI
Updated:November 24, 2018, 4:31 PM IST
File photo of Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Radha Mohan Singh.
There was no ban on use of scrapped currency to buy seeds, the Union minister said, adding statistics show that purchase of seeds increased after demonetisation, compared to the previous year.
“There was no ban on purchase of seeds with the (scrapped) Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes. In the year before demonetisation, 308 lakh tonnes of seed was bought by farmers, while it reached 348 lakh tonnes during the year when demonetisation was implemented,” Singh said at the Agro Vision Exhibition here.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who also attended the event, alleged that sugarcane factories in his state were closing down because of the “lackadaisical attitude” of governments in the last 20 years.
“However, I would like to inform you that we have started 119 sugarcane factories this year in Uttar Pradesh and two more will be started this month. We have paid about Rs 40,000 crore in Minimum Support Price (MSP) to sugarcane farmers this year alone,” he said.
Union minister Nitin Gadkari, the promoter of the exhibition, slammed those seeking ban on sugarcane cultivation in Maharashtra on the ground that it consumes too much water.
“Sugarcane is the most viable cash crop. Experts say blithely that grow less sugarcane and reduce the use of water. Then what should we grow? There is no good price for pulses, cotton and rice,” the minister said.
Source: News18