Centre has already taken notice of farmer's problems: Naidu

Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday said that the Centre has already taken notice of the problems of the farmers and the compensation for the deceased family has also been increased from Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs four lakh.

"The government has already taken notice of the problems of the farmers. The Prime Minister has reviewed at his level and more than nine different Cabinet Ministers went to different parts of the country, visited states, including myself, Home Minister (Rajnath Singh), Finance Minister (Arun Jaitley), Rural Development Minister (Birender Singh), Agriculture Minister (Radha Mohan Singh), and also the other minister have visited," Naidu said.

"They interacted with the administration and farmers there... we also briefed the concerned departments. There is also money available in SDRF, State Disaster Relief Fund, once that is exhausted the central teams also go to the states and then make recommendations," he added.

The minister said that even the norms have been revised and added, "Unless 50 percent of the crops have been affected then only you are eligible for compensation. Now the Prime Minister has reduced it to 33 percent. It is a major step taken by the government."

"Secondly, earlier the compensation for the deceased family used to be one lakh 20 thousand, now it has been enhanced to four lakh rupees. Then, for the loss of the cattle, cattle shed, loss of crop, everything has been substantially enhanced. Centre and states are together working to medicate the sufferings of the people," Naidu added.

He further appealed all the other political parties not to politicize the issue of farmer Gajendra Singh's suicide.

"Nobody should try to politicize this. I want to appeal this to all the other political parties. It is very unfortunate that the suicides are happening. One suicide is really a challenge to the entire system, we take it very seriously," he said.