Chandigarh, April 6
Senior Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal today urged union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to dispatch a special team to Punjab to assess the destruction caused to standing wheat crop by hailstorms in the State and release a special compensation package to the affected farmers.
The Bathinda MP, who has written a letter in this regard to the union Agriculture minister, also appealed to him to issue directions to defer interest on loans taken by affected farmers from Cooperative societies for one year besides issuing fertilizers to these farmers on concessional rates. “This will go a long way in helping the affected farmers to stand back on their feet”, she asserted.
Giving details, Harsimrat said a large part of Punjab was hit by unseasonal rain, hailstorms and gusty winds three days back. She said this led to flattening of wheat crops over several thousands of acres and even damaged the kernels making the crop unfit for harvesting. She asserted that the hailstorm which struck parts of Bathinda, Mansa, Fazilka, Moga and Sri Muktsar Sahib in the Malwa region, also struck parts of Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Hoshiarpur and Fatehgarh Sahib. “Besides destroying the wheat crop over vast tracts of land, the hailstorm has also damaged the maize crop at various places”, Harsimrat told the minister.
Calling for help from the centre, the MP said the farmers of the State were in utter despair as they had been abandoned by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government. She said the AAP government had not conducted any surveys to assess the damage caused to the wheat crop nor announced any compensation or given any to the farmers. “This despite promises by chief minister Bhagwant Mann to give compensation at the rate of Rs 50,000 per acre for crop damage,” she added.
Harsimrat also detailed how farmers of Punjab were not getting compensation for crop failures as well as natural calamities for the last four year tenure of the AAP government. She said last year the State was hit by devastating floods but farmers had not got any compensation despite announcements by both the central as well as the state governments. “The Centre has asserted that Rs 12,500 crore is available with the State under the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) but the Aam Aadmi Party government has stated that only Rs 1,582 crore have been received from the Centre under the SDRF since April 2022,” she added.
Harsimrat said farmers of Punjab were suffering due to this tug of war. “I have earlier also raised this issue in parliament and appealed that a central probe should be ordered into the exact status of these funds following which the same should be released to provide much needed relief to the flood affected farmers”, she added.
