BSY, Shobha attend funeral but is mere lip sympathy enough?
Family of the farmer blames Nirani Sugars for suicide, Yeddyurappa trying to secure political mileage.
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2013-11-29 13:02 GMT
Belgaum: Former Chief Minister B.S.Yeddyurappa, who was agitating for the extension of Shaadi Bhagya scheme to other communities in the Assembly, suddenly took up the cause of sugarcane farmers in what is being interpreted as a cunning move to secure political mileage from the suicide of a farmer on Wednesday.
The Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) supremo feels the suicide will help him regain his foothold in the Lingayat heartland in north Karnataka. Sources in the KJP said the former CM is likely to keep on harping on the sugarcane farmers' issue till the government fixes a ‘fair’ price for the produce.
If the House adjourns sine die without conducting proceedings following the sugarcane imbroglio, he may launch a farmers agitation in north Karnataka, said KJP sources.
Along with Yeddyurappa, working president of the KJP Shobha Karandlaje too attended the cremation of farmer Vittal Arabavi at his village Kankanavadi in Raibag taluk. He even led the BJP members into the well of the House shouting slogans against the state government. The BJP's ‘Young Turks’ joined the former CM during the protest.
Speaking to reporters, Yeddyurappa said the government should take the responsibility of distributing the additional amount of Rs 150 per tonne among farmers, over and above Rs 2,500.
The Chief Minister has completely ignored the problems of sugarcane growers, he said adding that if Siddaramaiah had addressed the price problem in time, the farmer would not have been forced to take the extreme step of killing himself.
Next: Family continues to blame Nirani Sugars for suicide
Family continues to blame Nirani Sugars for suicide
Belgaum: The immediate family and friends of Vittal Arabavi insist that the sugarcane farmer who committed suicide on Wednesday outside the Suvarna Soudha, and pushed the issue of the struggle faced by farmers in the state’s arid north into the public domain, had slaved over an eight acre field in Kankanwadi village, Raibag taluk that he leased for 20 years.
He only took his life because his hard work did not pay off, and when the payment against the 130 tonnes of cane he had supplied to a sugar factory run by former minister Murgesh Nirani, did not come through. (Nirani insists otherwise.) "Every year, we would grow about 150 tonnes of cane which we supplied regularly to Nirani Sugars and Satish Sugars. My father, who had never been in such a financial crisis before, had lost hope of getting the money due to us from Nirani Sugars ,'' insists his tearful son, Raghu, adding "I understand the pain that must have driven him to end his life."
The farmer, who had two wives, five children and two grandchildren had taken a loan of Rs 3 to 4 lakh to tide over financial crunch. "For Vittal, work was worship. He would stay in a hut in the fields, night and day once the cane growing season began to ensure that the yield was healthy, and transported to factories on time,'' recalls his friend, Appasaheb Byakod, shocked at his untimely death.