Mamata to unveil two-day festival to recognise farmers' achievements

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will inaugurate two-day-long Mati Utsav from Tarakeswar in Hooghly on February 22.

Banerjee is also expected to felicitate farmers with Mati Samman award for their extraordinary achievements in the agriculture sector.

Banerjee will be giving the award after inaugurating the Mati Utsav at Baliguri area of Tarakeswar on Friday.

Following the inauguration, the festival will be celebrated in all the districts. Hundreds of farmers from the districts will join the festival in their

respective districts.

Banerjee had initiated this programme marking the growth of the agriculture sector in the state. Initially, it used to take place on Lalbaba Ashram Ground in Pangarh.

She has been organising the programme for the past several years.

The preparation of the Utsav has already started in all the districts and steps have been taken to make necessary arrangements as thousands of people will be visiting Mati Utsav not only in Hooghly but also in other districts.

According to a senior official of the state Agriculture department, there will be stalls in the festival so that the farmers would get to know about different modern techniques of farming from the outlets.

There will be a separate platform where they can discuss about the problems they usually face during farming. There will be experts and officials of the state Agriculture department who could provide guidelines to the farmers. The knowledge-sharing programme with the experts will help to develop new ideas for farming.

There will be further discussions on different aspects of Mati Utsav in the districts. It may be mentioned here that after coming to power the Mamata Banerjee government has taken several initiatives for the benefit of farmers to ensure that they incur profit. Prodded by the Chief Minister, state Agriculture department has started a host of new schemes and the annual income of the farmers in the state has gone up three times than what had been in the past.

All the district administrations have been working on a war footing to put in place necessary arrangements ahead of official inauguration by Banerjee.

State Agriculture Minister Asish Banerjee who is an MLA from Rampurhat in Birbhum said that the Mati Utsav will be celebrated across the state after the Chief Minister inaugurates the festival in Hooghly. The programme is extremely beneficial for the farmers as they get a platform to interact with the department officials. It will be celebrated in Suri, the district headquarter of Birbhum.