Claiming that the amendments to the APMC Act in 2020 have benefited farmers, Cooperation Minister S.T. Somashekar said that the Karnataka Government has no proposal to repeal them. The amendments that were on the lines of the Central law, which was repealed following the agitation by farmers in Delhi.
“The amendments to the APMC enabled farmers to sell their produce anywhere instead of restricting them to the APMC. The clause imposing penalty between ₹5,000 and ₹25,000 has been removed through the amendments. There is no proposal to repeal the law,” Cooperation Minister S.T. Somashekar told the Legislative Council on February 15.
The Minister’s response was to a question by Congress member K. Harish Kumar, who sought to know if the amendments will be repealed and will some APMCs be merged. Mr. Kumar said that following the amendment, the APMCs had seen a decline in revenue by 70% and urged the government to repeal the amendments.
In his written reply, the Minister said that it could be ‘reviewed in future if it is in the interest of farmers’.
The BJP government led by B.S. Yediyurappa had passed the Karnataka Agricultural Produce Marketing (Regulation and Development) (Amendment) bill 2020, and a law was enacted to enable farmers to sell their produce outside the APMCs. While the amendments were passed by the Assembly in September 2020, they were passed by the Legislative Council in December 2020.
Leader of Opposition in the Council B.K. Hariprasad said, “Why is the double engine government still keeping the amendments when the Centre has withdrawn them? The Prime Minister has already apologised. Is the State Government going against the Centre and the Prime Minister?”
Justifying the changes, the Minister said that the farmers have benefitted from the amendments, but acknowledged that the revenue of APMCs had come down. “After the cess was reduced from ₹1.50 to 60 paise, revenue of APMCs from cess across the State has dipped from between ₹625 crore and ₹650 crore to between ₹135 crore and ₹170 crore,” Mr. Somashekar said.
The Minister said there is no proposal before the government to merge APMCs. “We will merge APMCs if the government thinks that the move would be beneficial. But a merger proposal will not be taken up by the government suo moto.”
