Accompanying the All India Congress Committee (AICC) vice-president Rahul Gandhi on his visit to a house of the deceased farmer in Maidur village and subsequent 6.5 km padayatra, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday announced enhancement of the compensation to the family of farmers who committed suicide to Rs. 5 lakh.
The Chief Minister made the announcement at the public rally at Gudagur village in Ranebennur taluk in the presence of Digvijay Singh and prior to Rahul Gandhi’s address.
He also announced that the guidelines that prevented paying compensation to farm labourers and farmers who were into farming by taking the farmlands of others on lease would be revised and they would also get a compensation of Rs. 5 lakhs. It was because of the earlier guidelines that over 300 such farmers who committed suicide have not been paid compensation yet in the State.
Penal interest off
As the crowd cheered, Mr Siddaramaiah also announced that his government would waive off the penal interest of farmers that accumulated till September 30, 2015 in addition to the waiver of interest announced earlier.
He also announced that the government would bear the educational expenses of the children of the farmers who committed suicide till their post-graduation apart from providing insurance cover to the family members of the deceased farmers. The medical expenses of the farmers’ family members in government and private hospitals, he said.
“The widow pension for the wives of farmers who committed suicide will be increased to Rs. 2,000 from Rs. 500. In the case suicide of a woman, a member of the family will get pension of Rs. 2,000”, Mr. Siddaramaiah said.
He said several farmers had taken loans from private money lenders and those charging exorbitant interest were being penalised. “Already 1,300 cases have been registered and 568 moneylenders arrested”, he said.
Bunch of lies
Appealing to the gathering to not get fooled by the ‘bunch of lies’ from BJP leaders, Mr. Siddaramaiah said that ‘lying’ was the philosophy and programme of BJP. He said that AICC President Sonia Gandhi had never made any such statement as not allowing Karnataka to draw water from Mahadayi and Mr. B.K. Hariprasad was a witness to that. However BJP leaders were trying to divert the issue by spreading such a lie to cover up their mistakes.
“When an all party delegation met the Prime Minister on the issue, the BJP leaders hardly opened their mouth and now Mr. Yeddyurappa is conducting ‘Raita Chaitanya Yatre’ and giving false promises to them, he said.
Earlier KPCC President G. Parameshwara, Ministers D.K. Shivakumar and H.K. Patil used the platform meant for ‘making appeal to the farmers to not to commit suicide’ to attack BJP leaders and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
