Punjab Government on Thursday came to the aid of thousands of farmers owning land across the barbed wire fence on the Indo-Pak border by granting them an annual compensation of Rs 3,000 per acre.
“The government has decided to compensate them for difficulty faced by them in cultivating their land by deciding to restart the cash compensation scheme,” said Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal while presiding over a function along with Revenue Minister Bikram Singh Majithia to disburse compensation cheques of worth Rs 99 lakh to 3285 farmers belonging to 47 border villages of Amritsar district with 3327 acres of land across the fencing.
He said that this scheme was initiated more than 10 years back by the central government led by the NDA but had been discontinued during UPA rule. Nearly 20,000 acres of land in six border districts of Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Pathankot, Ferozepur, Tarn Taran and Fazilka is situated beyond the international fencing in Indian Territory.
“Punjab government has released Rs six crore for compensation this year from its limited resources as the Congress-led UPA Government do not bother to come to the aid of Punjabi farmers despite requests made by the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to the Prime Minister as well as the Union Home Minister,” said Sukhbir, adding that the state government would make this an annual feature.
lambasting the UPA for constant neglect of border areas, he said that compensation scheme was launched during the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee after Parkash Singh Badal invited the then Union Home minister lK Advani to the border villages in order to understand the hardships being faced by the farmers there.
He said that besides various restrictions, the farmers could only work limited hours at their fields due to security issues.