Citing Corruption & Injustice Towards Farmers, Bihar Agri Minister Bows Out of Nitish’s Cabinet

Bihar Agriculture Minister Sudhakar Singh has resigned from his post and he has sent his resignation to party leader and Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav.

The president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar and Sudhakar Singh's father, Jagdanand Singh, announced today that Sudhakar Singh, who recently questioned the agriculture road maps and criticized his own government's policies, has resigned.

The RJD MLA had also raised the problem of corruption in his department, and on Saturday he declared that with the formation of the Grand Alliance government in the state, he would not permit the "continuation of BJP agenda" in his department.

“Sudhakar Singh government figures show that the agriculture road plans have failed miserably in every way to achieve their goals. These statistics are not mine. The statistics from the agriculture department show that the roadmaps have failed, thus there is no purpose in pursuing them further without taking the necessary corrective action."

He continued, "I am unable to extend this road map, at least not in my capacity as minister of agriculture. If the third agriculture road map is to be extended into 2022, the government may designate another department as the nodal department,” he said.

The first agriculture road map was launched in 2008 with a small budget, while former President Pranab Mukherjee launched the second agriculture roadmap in 2012 for the state to usher in a ‘Rainbow Revolution’ in the state.   The third was started in 2017 by former president Ram Nath Kovind, and the NDA government in Bihar decided to prolong it through 2022. Until then, the BJP held the ministry of agriculture. The budget for the most recent two agricultural road maps was close to 3 lakh crores.

Singh had stated that the decision to repeal the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act and the "mandi" system in 2006 was "anti-farmer" in nature and that he would not relent until they were restored. In 2006, the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar repealed the APMC Act and "mandi" (wholesale markets for agricultural produce) during the NDA rule in the state.