MP clears Rs 8K-cr supp budget to help drought-hit farmers

The Madhya Pradesh Assembly today cleared a supplementary budget of over Rs 8,000 crore for providing enhanced relief to the drought-affected farmers in the state during the day-long special session.
The session was convened in the midst of an agrarian crisis.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan gave an assurance that the affected farmers will get rice, wheat and salt at Re 1 per kg each till they tide over the distress.
He said he was pained by every suicide whether it was of a farmer or any other person.
Chouhan further said that there should be no politics over suicide.

His address was frequently hampered by Congress members Sunderlal Tiwari and Ramniwas Rawat.

Speaker Sitarsharan Sharma rose twice from his chair to bring in decorum in the House when the treasury benches traded charges with the Opposition over disruption of Chouhan's address.
To turn the table on Congress, Chouhan said that the suicide of farmers during the Congress rule in Madhya Pradesh was just double annually before December 2003.
He said that it was around 2000 annually then and now it has dropped to 1108 last year.
The Chief Minister recalled that during the Congress 10 year regime in MP which came to an end in December 2003, an amount of Rs 670 crore was disbursed to farmers as relief and compensation while during the BJP rule in last ten years, a whopping amount of Rs 7,600 crore has been distributed to farmers during distress.

During Congress rule in MP, the state power generation was 2,900 Mega Watt (MW) whereas now the power availability in the state was 15,000 MW, he added.
Chouhan said that the farmers were getting adequate power for domestic and agriculture purposes.
The irrigated land was 7.50 lakh hectares in MP during Congress rule which has now gone up considerably to 36 lakh hectares under BJP regime, he added.
After Chouhan's reply, Finance Minister Jayant Mallaiya moved a motion to pass the supplementary budget of over Rs 8,000 crore which was unanimously passed by voice vote.
Earlier, Congress raised the issue of suicides of the farmers in the wake of crop damage due to scanty in large part and excess rainfall in some regions and tried to put the government on the mat.