The belligerent Opposition on Tuesday readied ammunition to target the BJP-led saffron Government for its “failure” to tackle perhaps the worst-ever drought situation prevailing in the State, in what promises to be a stormy Budget Session of the Maharashtra legislature beginning here on Wednesday.
Giving a foretaste of their aggressive mood, the Opposition parties – Congress, NCP, Peasants and Workers Party (PWP) and lok Bhararti Party – boycotted a customary tea hosted by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on the eve of the Budget Session in protest against the “negligence” on the part of the saffron alliance government to extend relief to the drought-affected farmers and address issues of various other sections of the society.
At a joint news conference that he and other opposition leaders addressed after boycotting the tea hosted by the chief minister, leader of the Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil of the Congress demanded to know as to what did Fadnavis and 27 of his ministers achieve by undertaking a day-long tour of drought-affected areas of Marathwada last week.
“All the CM did was to spell out the rehashed promises that he had made earlier to the drought-affected people. The farmers in the affected areas had expected that the state government would waive off the loans taken by them. But nothing of that sort happened,” Vikhe-Patil said.
Vikhe-Patil and his counterpart in the State legislative Council Dhananjay Munde of the NCP said: “No relief was announced to farmers. Nor any step to ensure to provide drinking water to the people in the affected area. Similarly, the State Government has not made any arrangement to make available fodder to the cattle in the affected areas”.
Vikhe-Patil charged that a majority of the drought-affected farmers had not received whatever the meagre relief measure measures that the state government had announced earlier by way of a package in the past. “As many 27,000 drought-hit farmers have been excluded from the list of beneficiaries. The loan recovery from the debt-trapped farmers continues as before. There is heavy demand for employment guarantee scheme works in thousands of villages. But the work has not been started in these villages,” he said.
Slamming the State Government for its “insensitive” handling of drought situation in the state, Munde said: “Currently, Maharashtra is reeling such a severe drought which I can say is worse than the most severe drought that the state faced in 1972. There has been large-scale migration of people from drought-affected areas of Marathwada. From the information that I have gathered and from various sources, I can safely say that during the last 18 months, 25 to 35
lakh people have migrated from the rural areas of Marathwada region to urban areas,” Munde said.