Face2News/Abohar.
For 48 days, farmers have been staging an indefinite dharna near the national highway outside Gumjal village, demanding compensation for cotton crop and Kinnow orchards, which was destroyed by natural calamity and white fly attack and during this a farmer Sukhwinder Singh of Dalmirkhera village died while 4 farmers are still continuing their fast. In view of this situation, MLA Sandeep Jakhar specially reached the protest site today.
After expressing deep condolences on the death of Sukhwinder Singh, he lambasted the district administration and the Aam Aadmi Party government for ignoring the protest.
Jakhar said that this is the worst example of Aam Aadmi Party's insensitivity towards farmers that any MLA or senior leader of Aam Aadmi Party, which came to power by promising not to allow farmers to take to the streets, didn't interact with the protesters. Health Minister Chetan Singh Jouramajra and Higher Education Minister Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer visited Abohar but they did not bother to share a few moments with these farmers.(SUBHEAD)
While visiting different villages in the last month, the MLA had realized that about 80 percent of the cotton crop of Narma cotton has been destroyed due to the attack of white fly in Khuiyansarwer block. Many farmers had uprooted the Kinnow orchards due to non-availability of water in time and the plants dried up due to extraordinary rise in temperature, but till now the work of girdawari has not been done to pay compensation.
The farmers sitting at the protest site told Jakhar that Balbir Singh Rajewal, President of Bhartiya Kisan Union, had come to Gumjal last month after the Deputy Commissioner made a request over the phone. He directed to restore the old traffic system as the district administration had assured that the special girdawari work would be completed by September 30, but now the officials are saying that it will take one more month to complete the work.
The MLA urged Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann to resolve the issue by getting girdawari completed on priority.
