Demanding compensation for farmers who suffered losses due to untimely rain and hail storm and to waive of debts on the farmers, Rastryia lok Dal supremo Chaudhry Ajit Singh said he will intensify farmer movement, akin to the Telangana movement, in protest of proposed land Acquisition bill of NDA government. He was addressing the newsmen at a press conference shortly after holding a meeting with RlD workers and chalking out the future strategy on farmers’ issue. The leader said he will organise a core meeting of the party in the months to come and will spearhead farmers’ agitation in the time to come. This way he signaled that his party had come in active mode much before the assembly election scheduled in 2017.
Ajit said both the central and state government were ignoring farmers’ problems and had politicized the issue instead. “The crop losses that the farmers suffered was the biggest ever setback that farmers are facing. Both the governments were yet to release adequate funds to compensate the losses. Their effort is ceremonial and hardly adequate for those who suffered damages,’ the RlD supremo said.
He said the central government had no dearth of cash as it had earned Rs 200 crore in coal block allotment and Rs 100 crore by auctioning airwave. “If the central government is really interested helping the farmers it should release Rs 100 crore to waive off the loans on the farmers,’ he said while clearing that central government had adequate funds to meet the exigency.
Coming down heavily on prime minister Narendra Modi, the leader said Modi was least sympathetic for the farmers. ‘The land acquisition bill was aimed to benefit those may purchase huge chunk of lands from the farmers. The NDA government was misleading the public and farmers on the issue by not discussing the real aspects in public domain,’ he said. He said it was unfortunate that home minister Rajnath Singh’s statement on waiving off the loan on the farmers. He said there was need to reunite the farmers and let them realize their financial interest which mat be hampered if the proposed bill was passed.
“Once the farmers united, those hampering the interest of the farmers may get their political future forfeited,’ the leader warned. He said there were reports that 150 farmers ended their life following the losses of crops this season and demanded a compensation of Rs 15 lakh to the family of the deceased farmer and a compensation of Rs 27,000 per hectare to those suffered crop loss. He took a jibe on news channels for spreading Acche din abki bar Modi Sarkar and making it a breakfast time talk in each of the houses in the country and asked if the goods days had come.
About alliance with other parties in steering the farmer agitation, Chaudhry said he had not hitch in taking support of the party who thought on similar line. “We have successfully had run several agitation for the redressal of farmers problems in the past. In fact, parties who think that farmers problems were not being properly addressed by the present central government are welcomed with open heart be it BSP,’ he clarified the query if RlD had any alliance with BSP.
He strongly criticized the UP government saying there was nothing like governance in the UP. He said the UP government could shell out Rs 800 crore for Safai festival but it a meager of Rs 500 crore for the farmers of the largest state. He alleged BJP leaders Sushma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh for their double speak on the bill pointing out that both the leaders had credited themselves for getting the bill passed during UPA regime and now they were advocating the new bill terming the earlier as full of flaws.
Chaudhry later met UP governor and apprised him of the issues related to farmers. Earlier to it, a number of leaders of different political parties joined the membership of the party. Those joined were national general secretary of Socialist Party, Onkar Singh, trader leader Vijay Sabbarwal, former MP contestant of Bahraich Ram Dheeraj Rao and several others. Senior party leaders including RlD state president Munna Singh Chauhan and state secretary Anil Dubey were also present on this occasion.