Expressing shock over another suicide by debt ridden farmer at Ferozepur on Sunday, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday accused the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Baadal for remain mute spectator to the worsening financial crisis of peasantry in the state.
“It is sad that within a week of suicides by a farmer and his mother at Barnala, another farmer committed suicide at Ferozepur,” said AAP’s Punjab convenor Sucha Singh Chhotepur.
He said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had urged Chief Minister for putting moratorium on the recovery of loan from farmers, who are already under heavy debt, squarely due to faulty policies of state government, but Badals did not give any heed to it.
Unveiling the data of farmers’ suicides, Chhotepur said that as many as 116 farmers have committed suicide due to agrarian reasons so far in 2016 and Punjab was second state in which maximum numbers of farmers’ suicides were reported. Chhotepur said that the shocking incident of an alleged suicide by a farmer, along with that of his mother, when a moneylender along with a police posse arrived at his door to take passion of two-acres of land he had mortgaged has come at a time when Punjab has gained the dubious distinction of emerging as a farm suicide hotspot. “The recurring tragedy on the farm is happening at a time when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has urged the Supreme Court not to reveal the names of defaulting companies, which have defaulted in repaying loans of at least Rs 500-crore each,” he said.
On the other hand, farmers’ list of loan payers not only carries the names but also a loud warning saying that ‘do you know them’ and ‘have you seen them’ as if these farmers who have been unable to pay loans are terrorists. “How is that we have two sets of laws – one for the rich and powerful and another for the poor farmersIJ,” Chhotepur quipped wondering how many more farmers need to die before the revenue laws are made uniformIJ
Training his guns towards Badals, Chhotepur said that tired of the false promises by Akalis and Congress, farmers were not having hopes from AAP, which would definitely come out with the permanent solution of their woes, after coming to power in 2017.