India News | Budget 2022 Only Web of Words, No Plan for Capital Investment in Agriculture: Tikait

Noida, Feb 1 (PTI) Farmer leader Rakesh Tikait on Tuesday termed the budget 2022-23 a mere webs of words saying it lacked any vision for capital investment in agriculture.

He alleged that the budget only carried words like “Amrit Mahotsav”, “Gatishakti”, “E-Vidha” without meaning much.

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The national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) said the budget would not help the poor, villagers, or farmers but only the corporate.

The BKU, which is part of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) that spearheaded the year-long protest against Centre at Delhi borders, also claimed that the total budget for agriculture and allied sectors has been reduced from 4.26 per cent last year to 3.84 per cent this year.

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Tikait lamented that the government has reduced allocation for initiatives to double the income of farmers, for crop insurance scheme, scheme for purchase of crops, and for agriculture infrastructure fund.

He said it also dropped allocation to check stubble burning and failed to increase it for Kisan Samman Nidhi.

Citing no relief in the GST rates of items used in agriculture like seeds, insecticides, weedicides, tractors, animal and poultry feed, he said the farming community has “never been ignored to this extent” in any budget in Independent India.

“You want to increase the production of oilseeds because you want to hand over the cultivation of palm to the corporate. This cultivation is not suitable from ground water and environmental point of view,” Tikait claimed in a statement shared by BKU media in-charge Dharmendra Malik.

He claimed that it was clear from the speech of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharam that this budget is “negative for agriculture”.

He dubbed the budget “anti-farmer' and said the country's finance minister will get a “zero” for drafting it.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)