Rajkot: Even as the state government battles a crisis emerging from the massive groundnut stock purchased at minimum support price (MSP) of Rs 900, the Narendra Modi government is considering increasing the MSP for the kharif crop by Rs 400 per quintal in 2018-2019.Increasing the MSP is clearly aimed at wooing the farmers ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the crucial electoral test of BJP-led NDA government’s performance.The central government had increased the MSP for groundnut by Rs 200 to Rs 4,450 per quintal in 2017-18.Sudhir Malhotra, chairman, National Agriculture Cooperative Marketing Federation (NAFED), said “The procedure to decide MSP is tedious. It’s dervied by analyzing the data like area of production area, yield and production cost, which is provided by the state director of agriculture. But we have got to know that the centre is considering an MSP of Rs 4,850 per quintal for kharif crop this year.”NAFED, the apex organization of marketing cooperatives for farm produce under union agriculture ministry, had recently levelled serious allegations of massive corruption in groundnut procurement against the Gujarat government.On the other hand, the Gujarat government is not in the mood to implement Bhavantar Scheme on the lines of Madhya Paradesh where the stock is not purchased by any agency but government pays 100% of the production cost to the farmers irrespective of the quality. The difference between MSP and market price is deposited in the farmers’ accounts.“A meeting of state government was held before two months to review the Bhavantar scheme in which additional chief secretary Sanjay Prasad gave a presentation and opined that it should not be implemented in the state because government has to pay 100% for the crop. This will be discouraging for those farmers who harvested good quality crop and did not indulge in any malpractices,” Malhotra said.However, farmers don’t agree with the calculation method of production cost. JK Patel, president of Gujarat Kisan Sangathan, said, “Government considers only the cost of seeds, fertilizer and pesticide in production cost. We are demanding inclusion of labour cost and depreciation of land too.”NAFED had procured 8.30 lakh tonnes groundnut from Gujarat this year. As per the rule of Price Support Scheme (PSS), maximum 25% stock of total production can be procured at MSP. The groundnut production in 2017-18 was a record 32 lakh tonnes.

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