Yesterday, Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal urged Railways Minister Piyush Goyal to start two dedicated ‘Kisan’ trains from Abohar to Bangalore and Kolkata for the benefit of the kinnow growers of Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana.
The Union Food Processing Industries minister said Kisan trains with refrigerated units should run during the harvest season between December and March for kinnows. The kinnow harvest season falls between the months of December and March.
Union Food Processing Industries Badal congratulated Goyal for launching the Kisan rail initiative, said the cluster of kinnow cultivation, which included adjoining areas from the states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, was spread over one lakh hectares.
She said the town of Abohar in Punjab functioned as the focal market for aggregation of kinnows and handled twenty five lakh metric tonnes of produce every year.
She said a Kisan rail originating from Abohar could take kinnow to the southern and eastern states where there was a big market for the fruit, adding that the biggest market for the fruit was in Bangalore and Kolkata even as a significant quantity was exported to Bangladesh.
Source: businessworld.in
