Shiromani Akali Dal leader and former Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Tuesday requested Union Agriculture Minister NS Tomar to revoke the constitution of the committee on minimum support price (MSP).

Demanding the Union Government to “reconstitute” the panel “with a fresh mandate to reflect the commitment made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while scrapping the three farm laws in 2021,” the Member of Parliament (MP) from Bathinda said: “The SAD rejects the MSP Committee in its current form and the same is not acceptable to the farming community also.”

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“We need a fair committee in keeping with the spirit of the assurance given to Kisan Andolan (farmers’ agitation) representatives by the Prime Minister on 9 December 2021. Farmers across the country feel the committee constituted by the Central government is not representative of the farming community and experts who had agitated against the farm laws,” she said.

The SAD leader said the committee is loaded with Central government representatives and has as its chairman the former Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Agarwal who was the architect of the three farm laws.

The MP said that it also includes NITI Aayog member Ramesh Chand and several other members who have been vociferous defenders of the farm laws.

“In stark contrast it does not include any government representative from Punjab or any member from the state’s agriculture university even as other state representatives and members from their agriculture universities have been included in the committee. Under the present committee, there is no scope of any discussion which would safeguard the interest of farmers as the three farmer representatives slated to be included in the committee will be outnumbered by government representatives,” the former Union Minister said.

Badal said that the PM had clearly stated that a committee would work on ways and means to make MSP a legal guarantee. “Instead of making this the key mandate of the Committee, the same has been changed to making MSP more effective and transparent,” she said.