JOIN USRaising the issue during Zero Hour in the Lok Sabha, BJP leader Rajnath Singh demanded that Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) should be linked with agriculture as there was crisis of labourers in the fields due to implementation of the scheme.
Singh wanted agriculture be declared a “national occupation”, given the fact that majority of the population depended on it. This was supported by many Opposition members in the House.
Singh said that he recently visited few districts in coastal Andhra Pradesh and saw their plight. He expressed concern over the farmers in these districts including East Godavari declaring “a crop holiday or a strike” as they were not getting remunerative prices of their produce. “This (declaration of crop holiday by farmers) is an unprecedented development in the agriculture sector. They are not able to recover even input costs,” he said.