Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) has demanded special assembly session to take solid decisions over disaster relief to the farmers. CPI-M central committee member and State secretary Badal Saroj in a letter to Chief Minister on Sunday, said, “Ever since the hailstorm catastrophe in the State, newspapers are filled with your pictures with crying peasants. It appears nice that a Chief Minister is so sensitive. But, let the tours and visits be done with, however, true feelings, only tours and clicking of pictures could not console the farming community that is hit hard due to natural disaster.”
Saroj further said that as per the information collected by his party till date, relief to the farmers is a far thing as the peasants are not even informed that how much relief they would be getting. The compensation amount for some costly crops announced by your Government is not even half of the cost of that crop and the biggest thing is that how long it would take the relief to reach the affected farmers. There is no surety that they would even get this amount, he added.
He said that observing the seriousness of the issue that has hit majority of the population of State, the CPI-M demands and feels that it would be better to call a special session of the assembly to discuss the issue. This has also been a tradition in the Madhya Pradesh to call a special session of the assembly at times of natural disaster.
In any case, a special session of the assembly should be called immediately and it should be ensured that one-time compensation for all the farmers without any survey should be given. The compensation should be plus fifty per cent of their cost and should not be less than 10,000, he added.