The State Congress in Karnataka has asked the BJP government to compensate farmers for standing crops damaged on more than five lakh hectares due to excessive rainfall in October and November.
They also urged that farmers who had lost crops due to excessive rains be exempted from paying land revenue this year. On Thursday, Shivakumar added, the party's delegation would meet with Governor Thawarchand Ghelot and present a memorandum on the government's failure to address farmers' problems.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D.K. Shivakumar and MLA and former Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda urged the State Government to promptly begin the survey to assess agricultural damage. According to them, tehsildars must collect applications, and compensation should be distributed to farmers within a month.
Shivakumar urged party members to visit farmers and collect their applications, which they should then submit to the appropriate officials for payment of compensation.
They also claimed that insurance companies had "looted" farmers and the State Government's part of the insurance payment by rejecting coverage to farmers for a variety of reasons. They claimed that the government "kneeled down" in front of the insurance companies, claiming that farmers had not profited from the Fasal Bima Yojana, a crop insurance scheme. They believe such insurance companies should be blacklisted and barred from doing business.
In the current scenario where the returning monsoons have actually harmed the farming community a lot due to incessant rains which have currently caused a lot of crop loss in karnataka and a hike in prices of vegetables like tomatoes to levels which are similar to that of petrol, this concern about compensation for crop loss is genuine.
However we cannot deny the political plays going on in the background.
