The number of wheat farmers in Haryana who sold their produce at the minimum support price (MSP) fixed by the Centre nearly doubled over the past five years, reaching 6 lakh and making the state the third-largest beneficiary of wheat MSP procurement in the country.
Political Context
The state has a considerably larger beneficiary base after Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. The number of Haryana wheat farmers benefiting from MSP rose from 3.14 lakh in 2022-23 to 6.04 lakh in 2026-27, an increase of nearly 93%, according to a report tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday. Haryana ranks third in the country in terms of the number of wheat farmers benefiting from MSP, behind Madhya Pradesh (13.42 lakh beneficiaries) and Punjab (8.14 lakh), according to the figures. Since the BJP government in the state had announced that it would procure all 24 notified crops at the MSP, these figures underline Haryana’s growing weight in the wheat procurement system.
However, officials of the state agriculture department said that state government’s mandatory registration over the e-kharid portal is a key reason behind the surge in the number of MSP beneficiaries as the farmers in Haryana cannot sell their produce on MSP without the registration on the Meri-Fasal-Mera-Bayora portal “Registration of a genuine farmer cannot be linked to bogus procurement, as land records are mandatory for registration on the e-Kharid portal. In fact, now almost all farmers register to avail the benefit of MSP,” said a senior government officer, requesting anonymity, when asked about the reasons as Haryana had also faced allegations of bogus procurement during the last kharif and rabi procurement seasons.
