To save farmers from distress, the State government should waive farm loans completely, said the former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, while inaugurating Raita Chaitanya Yatre at the Vikasashrama Ground here on Sunday.
The State government has presented a budget of Rs. 137 lakh crore but it was not responding to farmers woes and the Bharatiya Janata Party would not rest till the agony of the farmers end. The BJP was with the farmers and they should not lose heart, he said.
The Chief Minister has no control over officials and hence, problems such as forest encroachment, sand extraction, unstable arecanut prices and load-shedding remained unsolved, he said. Unless there was control in the export and import of arecanut, price stability was not possible, he added.
Speaking on the Kasturirangan report, the former Minister Shobha Karandlaje, said that a “cultural landscape” report should prepared based on the model of Kerala and submitted to the Supreme Court but the State government was wasting time simply discussing the report in the Cabinet.
Though the Union government was giving Rs. 644 crore for the Anna Bhagya scheme, the State government was now giving only 3 kg of rice instead of 30 kg, she said and asked, “where was the rest of the rice going?”.
“When I was Power Minister, I provided a minimum of 7 hours power supply but now the Energy Minister (D.K. Shivakumar) was not ready to get electricity from the Central grid,” she regretted.
The former Minister B. Sriramulu said that though more than 500 farmers had committed suicide, the State government has given compensation to only 83 farmers as it had become penniless.
MLA Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri and the former Minister C.H. Vijaykumar, among others, were present.
State government is not responding to farmers woes, says the former Chief Minister
