BARNALA/BATHINDA: Concerned over a ‘glut-like’ situation with farmers facing hardships in selling paddy due to high moisture content, SAD president Sukhbir Badal on Saturday visited grain markets of Barnala and threatened to hold a protest if the procurement was not streamlined. On Friday, TOI had highlighted how farmers had to spend days in mandis to sell their produce and even had to spend Diwali night in mandis in Barnala.The farmers are sitting for days in mandis waiting for the grains to dry up so that the moisture content was within the permissible limit of 17%. After visiting Tapa grain market in Barnala, Sukhbir said, “I have met a number of farmers who have been sitting for many days waiting to sell the crop. I have also come to know that the rice millers are demanding up to 7-8kg more paddy per quintal to store in their mills, which was illegal, but the state government is doing nothing to stop all this.”He said SAD would not allow the ‘loot’ of farmers and stage a protest if paddy purchase was not improved at the earliest. Former rural development minister Sikander Singh Maluka and former finance minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa accompanied Sukhbir in the mandis. He said that with an aim to saving free electricity being given to the agriculture sector, the state government made farmers delay transplanting of paddy by five days due to which the crop got less time to mature and the moisture content went up in the crop.Meanwhile, farmer organisation BKU (Sidhupur) started an indefinite hunger strike outside the Bathinda district administrative complex against no procurement of paddy with moisture content higher than 17%. Members of BKU (Sidhupur) are demanding a raise in the limit of moisture content to 24%.

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