Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Thursday observed a token fasting along with his Cabinet colleagues to protest against the United Progressive Alliance’s anti-farmer stance and not providing grant to the frost and hail-affected farmers in the State.
At the fast site, Chouhan said, “We are observing this fast to draw the attention of the Centre towards the plight of the peasants whose crops were damaged extensively due to frost, hail and excessive rain recently. We demand that the Congress-led UPA regime should provide adequate grant to the farmers.” Chouhan said as many as 25,000 villages in the 49 districts were affected owing to this unprecedented
natural calamity and he undertook tours to most of the villages for the past few days and announced Rs 2,000 crore compensation from the State exchequer. “Unfortunately, Assembly’s leader of the Opposition Satyadev Katare yesterday described my tour as ‘Ola Partyatan’ (Frost Tourism) and it hurts me. The Congress became insensitive towards the woes of the ryots,” the Chief Minister said.
Chouhan reiterated that a national calamity fund should be constituted to combat such unforeseen calamity. “The people of the State stood behind farmers in their hour of crisis and provided them all possible help to deal with the calamity,” the Chief Minister said, adding that his Government has already earmarked Rs 2,000 crore for providing relief to farmers and this is just the beginning. We will take all possible measures to provide aid to the affected farmers.
“BJP leaders and Ministers are observing fast to draw the attention of the Central Government towards the plight of farmers,” he said. The ruling BJP, which had demanded declaration of extensive damage to crops by rain and hailstorm in MP as a national calamity had given a call to observe a shutdown on Thursday in order to highlight the alleged apathy of the Centre towards the State’s farmers. It has also demanded a special package of Rs 5,000 crore from the Centre for providing relief to affected farmers.
The CM also criticised the Centre for not providing relief to soybean crop loss, not purchasing gram crop on MSP at Rs 3100 per quintal and for not recognising Madhya Pradesh as a basmati rice producing region. On the occasion, he demanded to constitute a permanent National Disaster Relief Fund to deal with such crises and also appealed to people to donate generously in the Chief Minister’s disaster relief fund.