10 Farmers’ outfits start 3-days protest, demand Centre govt to declare floods as natural calamity for higher compensation
10 Farmers’ outfits start 3-days protest, demand Centre govt to declare floods as natural calamity for higher compensation
Farmers reject Rs.6800 per acre compensation as inappropriate, demand hike to Rs.50,000
Farmers sit on 3-days dharna in front of BJP leaders house
Ferozepur, September 11, 2023: On a call from Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) passed by 32 outfits, as many as 10 farmers’ outfits today sit on dharna in front of the house of the senior BJP leader Rana Gurmeet Singh Sodhi demanding higher compensation of Rs.50000 per acre instead of Rs.6800 announced by the government as inappropriate by declaring the floods as natural calamity besides restoring the cancelled ‘girdavri’ of farmers.
Addressing the protesters, Harnek Singh Mehma, Sukhminder Singh and Gurmeet Singh Mehma said, it looks to be a joke with the farmers by announcing the compensation of Rs.6800 per acre for the losses suffered due to floods. The loss is not only to the crops but of houses also. We demand a compensation of Rs.50,000 per acre for loss of crop, and Rs.5 lac for damage to the house. They demand for compensation of losses due to man-made floods from the central and state governments.
They said, in Ferozepur the situation is different; the farmers will not get the compensation as they are not having ‘girdavri’ in their names in the Ferozepur, Fazilka, Amritsar, Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur districts. Now, we have two demands, first to restore the ‘girdavri’ of the farmers who are cultivating the land even before the partition of India in 1947 and second demand is that when one-fourth area of the country has been affected by floods, it should be declared as natural calamity, to arrange compensation for the NDRF funds.
As per the information, the compensation of Rs.6800 per acre by the state government, as per the provision of the national disaster relief fund (NDRF) which mandates for compensating loss to freshly sown crop and the loss compensated is the input cost, as crop was just sown when hit by floods. Moreover, who would pay for the loss incurred by farmers who are unable to cultivate the crop at all or their crop was washed away repeatedly in floods and what about the contract amount that the farmers tiling land on lease are supposed to pay to the owners.
Farmer leaders further said, our demands, to keep alive the farmers, for compensation of Rs.50,000 from both the centre and state governments.
Our dharna is for three days and now the ball is in the court of the government and it depends upon them to sort out the issue or to face the dharna in Delhi as per the decision of the SKM, till the end of three days’ dharna.
