Amid opposition protests, Parliament okays two Agriculture Bills

New Delhi: The Rajya Sabha on Sunday passed two farm sector’s Bill — Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020– amid massive uproar by the Opposition.
Lok Sabha has already passed these two Bills on September 17.
Relying the debate on these two Bills, the Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that soon after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi took over in 2014, decided to double the income of the farmers and initiated slew of measures in the this direction.
Mr Tomar assured all Members that system to fix Minimum Support Price (MSP) for food grain will not be abolished through these Bill for which the Opposition was protesting.
He further said that the UPA Government could not implement the recommendations of Dr MS Swaminathan Committee’s report which had recommended to fix MSP on the basis of the 50 percent add up to the cost of the cultivation.
It was the Modi Government who implemented the new MSP on the Swaminathan committee report, he added.
Mr Tomar categorically assured the House that through these Bills, the MSP will never be affected in any manner and even the Prime Minister Modi has also assured the nations that the system of the MSP will be not be affected in any manner.
During the reply of the Minister in the House, the Deputy Chairman Harivansh reminded him of the time duration of the House and asked him to get this Bill passed within the 1300 hrs upon which the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Parhlad Joshi said that the timing of the House to be extended till these two legislation were passed.
The Opposition Members lodged strong protest over the Government approach to extension the duration of the time and demanded that the passing of these Bills should be done on Monday.
Despite the objection raised by the Leader of Opposition Gulam Nabi Azad that duration of the House is always extended by the consensus of the House, not by the numbers of the treasury bench, the Chair allowed the Minister to continue his reply. This agitated the Opposition Members and some Members of TMC, AAP came in to well and created ruckus.
During uproar, the Chair’s mike was broken and House manual books were torn before the Chair’s place and House was adjourned for 15 minutes.