AAP to launch statewide stir for farmers' crop loans waiver

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) plans to launch an agitation to draw the BJP-led state government's attention to the woes of Maharashtra's farmers from June 8, a senior party leader said here today.
AAP volunteers will gift hangman's nooses to the state government through collectors and tehsildars across all the districts of Maharashtra, AAP Maharashtra covnenor Subhash Ware said.
Addressing a press conference here in the city, he also demanded that the state government must initiate immediate remedial action for timely benefit of farmers and farm labourers.
"Crop loans of all farmers must be immediately waived off and they must be provided with a Rs 25,000 per acre farm loan to enable sowing during the forthcoming season," he said.

"Sugarcane cultivators must be remunerated for their product and action must be initiated against errant sugarcane factories as well as officials who indulge in corruption by wrongly measuring sugarcane," he said.
Earlier, AAP's Maharashtra unit volunteers and leaders had organised a mass contact programme for farmers from May 17 to May 24 under the banner of the 'Shetkari Shetmajur Samwaad Yatra', which the party claimed, had visited 26 villages and 38 suicide-affected families in Marathwada, besides 101 villages and 115 suicide-affected families in the Vidarbha region.

Ware alleged that compensation for crop losses due to unseasonal rainfall and hailstorms have not reached farmers. The situation in rural Maharashtra has deteriorated to such an extent that families of farmers who committed suicide are being denied compensation on technical grounds, he alleged.

He said that during the 'Shetkari Yatra' in May, AAP volunteers visited families of farmer who have committed suicides and decided to fund the education of these children upto 12th standard.
"A total of 104 students have been adopted and arrangements have been made for their educational expenditure upto the 12th standard," Ware said.