CHENNAI: The Tami Nadu Congress farmers’ wing has submitted a 12-point charter of demands to an election manifesto team of the party when it came down to Chennai to feel the pulse of Tamil Nadu in view of the forthcoming parliamentary elections next year.
The Congress election manifesto team, led by Manpreet Singh Badal, Finance Minister in Punjab, had consultations with the functionaries of various wings of the party in Chennai on Tuesday.
At the meeting, the Congress farmers wing, led by S Pawan Kumar, submitted the 12-point charter of demands to the team, saying that all demands must be incorporated into the party’s election manifesto, for the welfare of the farmers in the country, in general, and in Tamil Nadu, in particular.
The farmers’ wings has demanded, among other things, water management board for Tamil Nadu, machinery for treating sewage water and using it for agriculture, as being done in the Gulf, a food and agro park in every taluk or at least in every district, a separate department for organic farming, a separate software to bridge the gap between supply and demand for agricultural products to protect the farmers from fleecing traders, MSP for rubber plantations as in Kerala, agro markets in every 10-km radius near all national highway roads with a motel facility for farmers coming to sell their produce, a separate section in the
Animal Husbandry Department to make available fodder, the announcement of the Cauvery delta region as an agriculture zone and ban on non-agricultural industries and mining and extraction (such as hydrocarbon, methane etc). Besides farmers’ wing, district presidents, MLAs and other wings of the Congress also submitted memorandums.