Former Union Minister and SAD’s MP from Bathinda Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Monday asked the Central and Punjab Governments to rush fertilizers, particularly urea, to the State immediately.

“Any further delay in supply of urea to farmers could have catastrophic results and lead to a 15 percent decline in wheat yield,” she said.

Harsimrat said that the first application of urea was given to the wheat crop in mid November to ensure high yield.

“The time is passing by and there is no certainty of farmers receiving the required urea supply of eight lakh tonnes soon with train services to resume tomorrow.

It is unfortunate that the Congress Government has been caught napping with the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh not making any attempt to ensure supply of urea by road from nearby areas,” she said.

She maintained that Urea is available at the NFL plant in Panipat and could have easily been transported by road to parts of Punjab, “but the Congress Government did not take any initiative”.

“Now, the Chief Minister must hold talks with the Centre and ensure urea is supplied to the State on top priority in the next one week itself to ensure the wheat crop is not adversely affected,” she said adding that the State Government should also make arrangements for supplies from neighbouring States by road.

Harsimrat said that complete lack of any initiative by the Congress Government to ensure supply of urea to farmers had already resulted in huge losses to them.

“Farmers have been forced to purchase urea at higher rates from Haryana and Rajasthan,” she said adding that whatever limited supply of urea was being made from the NFL plants at Bathinda and Ropar had also been stopped as it had exhausted its quota of supply for Punjab.

Considering this, Harsimrat asked the Chief Minister to take up the issue of urgent transport of urea and other needed fertilizer to Punjab on an emergency basis with the Prime Minister.

“The Central Government should also do its utmost to ensure farmers of Punjab did not suffer for want of urea. Farmers should not get an impression that they are being victimized for rising up against the central farm laws,” she said while requesting the Union Government to resolve all the grievances of farmers at the earliest.

“The Union Government should favourably consider the demand of farmers to ensure assured government purchase of food grains at minimum support price (MSP),” she added.