Union Minister meets deceased farmer's family members

Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat today met the family members of Brunda Sahu, a farmer who committed suicide owing to crop loss on Novmber 1.

Sahu, a resident of Kalapani village in Bargarh district, committed suicide by consuming poison a day after setting his pest-affected paddy crops on fire.

Accompanied by BJP state president Basant Panda and BJP's legislature party leader K V Singhdeo, Shekhawat, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, spent some time with the deceased farmer's family.

Hundreds of leaders from different political parties have been coming to our home after my father committed suicide. However, we are yet to receive any help from the government or others. Please help my family in this time of crisis, Rajesh, the deceased farmer's son, told Shekhawat.
 

Rajesh later told a private news channel that he has been assured of four decimal homestead land and a house under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana.

Later, Shekhawat told reporters at Bargargh that farmers in Odisha have used wrong pesticide which aggravated pest attack on the paddy crop.

"About 99.9 per cent farmers I met told me that no one from the state govenrment has made then aware about the evil impact of the pesticide they used to save paddy crop from pest attack," Shekhawat told reporters.

He said both the Centre and the state goevrnment should join hands to help farmers.

Meanwhile, Odisha agriculture minister Damodor Rout said he would not visit the family of the Bargarh farmer Sahu, who committed suicide. "He (union minister) met Sahu's family members as they belonged to BJP. Sahu's family do not belong to my party," Rout said.