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Farm laws: Modi Govt reached out to 93 lakh farmers in 6 months, says officials

New Delhi
December 11, 2020

The Government conducted nearly 1.4 lakh training and webinar sessions reaching out to nearly 93 lakh farmers in the last six months regarding the new agriculture reforms, senior government officials said on Friday in an attempt to counter the perception that extensive outreach and consultations with farmers were not done.

�There is a manufactured perception that the central government has not done extensive outreach and consultations with farmers and their representatives, in the context of the ongoing farmer protests against the new agriculture laws,� a senior Government official said. He said a comprehensive awareness and outreach drive has been undertaken at multiple levels with thousands of small gatherings took place at the village level to inform a large number of farmers about the bills.

The official said that in June 2020, 708 trainings and webinars were organized covering 21,231 farmers, 873 trainings and webinars were conducted reaching out to 26,196 farmers in July followed by 852 and 840 training and webinar sessions conducted covering 25,569 and 25,205 farmers in August and September respectively. October saw 36,102 training and webinar sessions covering over 27 lakh farmers while November saw the maximum number of 97,679 sessions covering over 64 lakh farmers �2.23 crore SMS messages have been sent to farmers during the month of October,� the official said, furnishing these figures.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself spearheaded the task of creating awareness and has spoken on these reforms over 25 times since they were announced, which is nearly an address every week. �PM spoke about the reforms from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, during the Bihar elections where NDA got a victory and in multiple addresses to farmers and during Mann Ki Baat,� the official said. He also cited how the PM had cited the examples of various progressive farmers who got the benefits of these provisions and cleared myths.