Agri growth Centre's top priority: Min

Patna: Union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh on Sunday said it was strange that CM Nitish Kumar has not included any agriculture related programme in his 'saat nishchay' to be implemented over the next five years in the state.
Singh, who was speaking on the sidelines of a function held on the premises of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) here, said the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre has put so much emphasis on agriculture sector."The Centre has made additional allocation of Rs 15,000 crore in the 2016-17 Union budget to lighten the loan burden on farmers," Singh said, adding that the Centre and the state government should have been on the same page. tnn
Assailing the Congress, Singh said its respective governments at the Centre took the country through the processes of "phoney socialism" to "phoney capitalism," which resulted in economic imbalance and rampant poverty.
"The considered belief and aim of the Modi government at the Centre is to record appreciable growth rate in the agriculture sector, as this alone would take the country along the path of progress," Singh said, adding that stress is as much on increase in production as on improvement of irrigation facilities, development of the animal husbandry and milk production and grant of justifiable minimum support price for crops produced, among other measures.
He said Rs 500 crore has been allocated to promote cultivation of pulses in the country besides facilitating an increase in minimum support price for them.