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Council Whip Accuses Congress of Paper Drought and Zero Farmer Payout
In Short
Ravikumar Threatens to Halt September 21–23 Special Session
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N Ravikumar, Chief Whip of the Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Council
Bengaluru: N Ravikumar, Chief Whip of the Opposition in the Karnataka Legislative Council, released a press note in Bengaluru charging that the Congress government is playing politics over farmers’ bodies while withholding drought relief.
He said a severe drought has settled on the state, yet the list of drought-hit taluks has been confined to paper, farmers have been cheated of even one Rupee, and the ministry headed by D K Shivakumar is a wholly shameless and anti-farmer government. He directed a sharp attack at what he called administrative failure and moral collapse.
“Months have passed since a government order named drought-affected taluks, but the Revenue Department has still not credited one Rupee of input subsidy to a distressed farmer’s account,” he said.
He asked whether the drought was declared only to win media publicity, or whether the treasury had been looted so completely that there is no money left for farmers. Free-guarantee noise, he alleged, is breaking the spine of the farmer who is the state’s backbone.
He said debt and crop ruin have already driven more than 350 farmers across Karnataka to suicide, and he asked whether those deaths are suicides or murder by the government. Farmers in Kalyana Karnataka, Kittur Karnataka and the Old Mysore region, he said, are losing their lives because they cannot bear moneylenders’ harassment, while the government sleeps like Kumbhakarna. Corpses appear before its eyes, he said, and a government without compassion is not administering but conducting a farmers’ massacre.
About 40 percent of families in villages of North Karnataka and Kalyana Karnataka, he claimed, are abandoning homes for Maharashtra, Gujarat and Bengaluru because there is no farm work, no drinking water and no fodder for cattle. He asked whether such a government retains any honour, called it inactive and unfit even to open village fodder banks, and said it spends its time serving leaders in Delhi.
Ravikumar contrasted that record with the previous BJP governments of B S Yediyurappa and Basavaraj Bommai. Those ministries, he said, did not wait for central NDRF money during drought and flood and wrote a record by paying 100 percent extra top-up relief from the state’s own chest.
“Dry land that received 6,800 Rupees a hectare under the central rule got another 6,800 Rupees from the BJP state, or 13,600 Rupees in all; irrigated land that had stood at 13,500 Rupees was raised to 25,000 Rupees; more than 2,000 crore Rupees reached more than 30 lakh farmers by DBT,” he stated.
Under the present Congress term, he said, crop has been destroyed on more than 55 lakh hectares, economic loss has crossed 20,000 crore Rupees, and more than 350 farmers have died under debt, yet the state has paid 0 Rupees from its SDRF.
He accused the Congress government of stalling by pointing at the Centre, of sacrificing the farmers’ tear-relief fund to finance guarantees, and of showing, in figures, the gap between a farmer-facing BJP and a Congress that drinks farmers’ blood.
He warned that the “drought betrayal” will be questioned harshly in both the Assembly and the Council during the special session from September 21 to 23. If the government has any shame or humanity, he said, it must at once deposit 25,000 Rupees an acre as input subsidy by DBT in every distressed farmer’s account; pay 10 lakh Rupees immediately to families of farmers who have died and stay recovery of farm loans; issue a second drought list that adds every eligible taluk left out, including Kalaburagi, Belagavi, Gadag and Haveri; and open fodder banks and drinking-water supply in villages on a war footing.
If the drought-relief fund is not released before the special session starts, he said, the sitting will not be allowed to proceed, and a great war-bugle will be sounded against the Congress government inside Vidhana Soudha and on the street. (eom)
