Last Friday, the Congress-led Karnataka government announced that they have decided to revoke changes made to the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) act by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. Chief minister Siddaramaiah, in his budget speech, said the Congress government has decided to withdraw the anti-farmer Act in order to protect the interest of farmers.
The Karnataka APMC (Regulation and Development) (Amendment) Bill, 2023, was tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday. In the bill, the government pointed out that amendments made by previous the BJP government allowed trading outside APMC yards and stated that this neither helped farmers in getting remunerative prices for their produce nor in improving their economic status.
The amendments were on the lines of the Farms law 2020, which was repealed in November 2021, following the agitation by farmers in Delhi. “Our government expects the Agricultural Produce Market Committees to work in the best interest of the farmers and ensure a fair price for their produce. Our government in its earlier tenure took several measures to strengthen the APMCs and introduced online market system, the first-of-its-kind in the country,” Siddaramaiah said on Friday.
Source: hindustantimes.com