Jitendra Singh inaugurates seed processing plant in J-K, says it will help double farmers' income

Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said the plant will be catering not only to the district of Kathua but also to the entire union territory of Jammu & Kashmir and the two adjacent states of Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. 

Farmers will now have superior quality seeds available at their doorstep, a statement issued by the Union Personnel Ministry said. 

Singh said the unit will not only enrich the quality of crops sown but will also enable farmers to procure seeds of a superior quality at a lower cost, which will in turn raise the margin of their profits. 

“It is a historic day today as Jammu & Kashmir, through district Kathua, has joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mission for doubling farmers’ income in India,” Singh said after inaugurating the plant which has a generation capacity of 16 lakh seeds and a processing capacity of 24 lakh seeds. 

This is a first-of-its-kind plant to have come up in this entire region, according to the Personnel Ministry's statement. 

Lauding Prime Minister Modi, Singh said the schemes launched in the last seven years like the Kisan Bima Yojana, the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, the Soil Health Care etc., have been able to uplift farmers in a way no other government has done in 70 years. 

In the last six or seven years, barring one year of COVID constraints, the entire Lok Sabha constituency of Udhampur-Kathua-Doda has been benefited with national projects of distinction one after the other, and Kathua especially, has become the capital of some of the most prestigious national projects in Jammu & Kashmir, the minister said.