Belagavi: With north Karnataka responding enthusiastically to the rally organized by JD(S) to highlight the problems faced by farmers, party state president Mr H.D. Kumaraswamy and patriarch H.D. Deve Gowda announced they would be continuously touring the region for the next six months.
According to Mr Gowda, who is in politics for over five decades, this is the biggest rally of the Janata Parivar in north Karnataka and outnumbered those attended by former CMs late Ramakrishna Hegde and Veerendra Patil.
“Both Congress and BJP claim to have given so many programmes for the people. But how many have they envisaged for farmers? Mr Modi talks of Smart Cities and Amruth Cities. He should realise that only around 25 per cent of the population lives in cities, the rest live in rural areas. While spending lakhs of crore of rupees on 25 per cent of the population, only Rs 105 crore has been released for testing the soil in farmers’ land,'' Mr Gowda said.
Mounting an attack on Mr Siddaramaiah, Mr Kumaraswamy said though the first sugarcane farmer committed suicide in November, 2013, the government has not come out with a comprehensive plan to help them. The crop insurance scheme and Agriculture Price Commission have been of no use. Not only sugarcane farmers, almost all farmers in the state are in distress and so suicides are going up, he said.
The government is fleecing farmers by forcing them to sell paddy at Rs 1,000 per quintal. “How can they survive with this money? Do they have a choice other than committing suicide?'' he asked. Mr Kumaraswamy urged the government to pay sugarcane price arrears to farmers from the government corpus and then adjust it after getting money by selling the sugar they have confiscated from sugar factories.
