Farmers’ leader Kurubur Shanthakumar on Tuesday, January 30, accused political parties of shedding crocodile tears about farmers and their sufferings and trying to divide the farmers’ organisations to break the farming community.
“With elections approaching, the political parties are engaged in vote bank politics, conveniently forgetting the sufferings of farmers amidst severe drought, and not raising the issue of waiver of farm loans. When the Telangana government can waive farm loans and the Centre can consider waiver of huge loans of industrialists, why cannot the loans of State farmers be waived?”, he asked at a meeting of farmers here.
He said sugar factories were not paying the additional cost of ₹150 on a tonne of sugarcane despite an order in this regard following 39 days of sugarcane farmers’ protest. “If the government cannot ask the factories to pay up, then it should make the payment to farmers,” demanded Mr. Shanthkumar, who is the president of the Federation of Farmers’ Organisations of Karnataka and the State Sugarcane Growers’ Association.
