The Centre has initiated steps to implement the ambitious project of interlinking rivers in the country to make irrigation facilities available for un-irrigated areas.<br/><br/>Union Minister of Home Affairs Rajnath Singh stated this while inaugurating the 3-day 2nd Agri-Leadership Summit-2017 at Surajkund, near Faridabad today. He said that a 20,000 crore rupees fund has been created under NABARD to improve irrigation facilities and the Centre has set a target to bring more than 76 lakh hectares of land under irrigation by the year 2019. <br/><br/>Prices of urea and other fertilizers have been brought down and these are available without any hurdle, he added. He said that Government has decided to produce neem-coated urea to check its misuse by big entrepreneurs and it also enhances the soil potential. <br/><br/>He said that neem-coated urea also gives higher crop yield by minimizing the cost of investment. The Minister urged the farmers to ensure their role in branding, processing and marketing of their produce so as to become agri-leaders in real sense. <br/><br/>Mr Rajnath Singh said that the Central Government had also decided to connect all 585 wholesale mandis in the country with e-NAM project so that farmers could sell their produce at highest competitive prices in different mandis. These mandis would be connected with e-NAM by March 2018.<br/><br/>While lauding the efforts of Haryana Government in agriculture and allied sectors, he said that this reflects government's commitment towards achieving the vision of doubling the income of farmers by the year 2022. He said that the government has also promoted cashless transaction to do away with the role of middlemen so that farming community could get actual benefit of various schemes and programmes.