Bihar Polls: Punish Nitish Govt For Farm Income Losses of Rs 72,00Cr, Says AIKS

New Delhi: The All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), one of the largest farmers unions in country, on Thursday called upon the people of poll-bound Bihar to punish and oust sitting Chief Minister Nitish Kumar from power owing to Rs 72,000 crore losses in farm income.

Addressing a press conference at the Press Club of India in the national capital, Vijoo Krishnan, general secretary, AIKS, said the findings of the second advance estimates of production released by Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare indicate that the farmers of the country lost Rs 3 lakh crore alone in the rabi crops season in 2024-25. Similarly, the cumulative loss in farmers’ income in the past nine years amounted to an estimated Rs 24 lakh crore, he claimed.

Training his guns at the Bihar Chief Minister, Krishnan maintained that the farmers in Bihar, too, lost Rs 10,000 crore in 2024-25 in paddy, wheat and maize owing to non-procurement at rates based on the recommendations of the M S Swaminathan Committee.

“We are part of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, and are in talks with other farmers’ unions for devising ways to convey this message to the people of Bihar,” he added.

The farmers bodies have maintained that the Commission on Agriculture Costs and Prices (CACP), the central body responsible for announcing minimum support price (MSP) for acquiring foodgrains from farmers, has been employing a wrong methodology for calculating the input costs of seeds, fertiliser, herbicides, pesticides, diesel and harvesting.

While CACP has used A2 + FL formula, the farmers have been asking for C2+ 50% for fair returns on the produce. A2 covers major costs, such as fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and diesel among other costs, and FL implies unpaid family labour. C2 refers to comprehensive costs, which also covers rents and forgone interest on land apart from traditional costs.

Krishnan said: “Considering the removal of the current MSP system and procurement for crops, such as milk, entire commercial crops, vegetables, fruits, meat, eggs, and fish, the losses suffered by Indian peasants are manifold. This has led to indebtedness and, on average, 31 farmers commit suicide daily. All of this is done to ensure corporate profits under the corporate-communal BJP-led NDA regime.”

P Krishna Prasad, finance secretary, AIKS, said that the Central government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, claimed to be a saviour of farmers through schemes like PM-KISAN. However, farmers had lost much after the Centre tricked them by not paying MSP as per the Swaminathan formula, he added.

“As of early August 2025, over Rs 3.90 lakh crore has been disbursed to farmers under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme. This total includes the release of the 20th instalment (August 2, 2025) of Rs 20,500 crore to over 9.7 crore farmers, the 19th instalment (February 24, 2025) of Rs 2,000 crore to more than 9.8 crore farmers and the 18th instalment (October 5, 2024) of Rs 20,000 crore provided to more than 9.4 crore farmers,” he said.

The scheme was announced in 2019 and implemented with retrospective effect from 2018. The scheme provides an annual income support of Rs 6,000 to eligible farmer families paid in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000 each, disbursed every four months.

Prasad said “If the MSP@C2+50% had been implemented, then farmers cultivating 20 crops alone would have earned Rs 19 lakh crore, so that an amount of Rs 11 lakh crore could have been retained even after gifting Rs7.80 lakh crore to Prime Minister Modi.”

The AIKS leader said that farmers had seen the “repeated betrayals by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for 11 years since 2014. In 2016, he had announced to double the farmers' income by 2022; but failed miserably. However, the Prime Minister ‘succeeded’ in doubling the cost of production and a manifold increase in the assets of the corporate companies,” he added.